More than 80 Chibok girls freed in Nigeria

Members of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign rally in Nigeria’s capital Abuja to mark 1,000 days since over 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped from their secondary school in Chibok by Islamist sect Boko Haram, Nigeria January 8, 2017.   

REUTERS, 07th MAY, 2017  - Boko Haram militants have released 82 schoolgirls out of a group of more than 200 whom they kidnapped from the northeastern town of Chibok in April 2014 in exchange for prisoners, the presidency said on Saturday.  

Switzerland and the International Committee of the Red Cross helped secure the 82 girls in “lengthy negotiations”, the presidency said on its Twitter account.  

President Muhammadu Buhari will receive the girls on Sunday in the capital Abuja, it said, without saying how many Boko Haram suspects had been exchanged or disclosing other details.  

A military source said the girls were currently in Banki near the Cameroon border for medical checks before being airlifted to Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state. From there they will be flown to Abuja.   The kidnapping was one of the high-profile incidents of Boko Haram’s insurgency in Nigeria’s northeast, now in its eighth year and with little sign of ending.