More than 100 Girls Missing After Raid on Nigerian School

It was reported earlier this year that more than 100 girls were missing after the raid at a Nigerian School. The Media had reported that more than 100 of the girls have been missing after a suspected Boko Haram militants attacked their school in northeastern Nigeria.

Bashir Manzo, father of one of the girls, interviewed with CNN said that his was one of the girls who is missing and unaccounted for after the raid on the Government Girls Science Technical College in Dapchi, Yobe.  The Nigerian Government has not yet come up with the release of the official list of those missing.  Shortly after the attack, Yobe’s governor did officially announce that almost 50 girls are unaccounted for, but the Manzo, who is the newly elected head of the parents’ association at the school, has reported that according to parents and the association’s records 104 girls were missing.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has given a promising statement to the families that they will be returning the missing girls to their families in a safe and secure way and hopefully bring the attackers to justice. Buhari has proclaimed it a national disaster and a shameful act for the world.  A great number of the troops and surveillance aircraft have been deployed to search the territory for the unknown number of missing students.

Update: In a statement release not long after the initial event, the Yobe state government said an unspecified number of girls had been rescued from the “terrorists who abducted them” and were now with the army.

Reuters news agency quoted parents and a government official as saying that 76 girls had been rescued and at least 13 were still missing

According to an ongoing head count, 104 of the girls abducted by militants from their boarding school on February 19 were “dropped off” Wednesday in Dapchi in northeast Nigeria, Minister of Information and Culture Alhaji Lai Mohammed said in a statement. Those schoolgirls and one boy were among those returned early Wednesday, the minister said. “He was also picked from the school,” he said of the boy. “I don’t know what he was doing there.”
The schoolgirls were later flown to the capital, Abuja, where they are expected to meet the Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari. The minister of information said no ransom was paid to free the Dapchi schoolgirls and said their release “came with no conditions.
“The only thing they asked for was that they should be the ones to drop them off. They didn’t want to hand them over to any third party. Nothing was given in exchange for them”.