Missing Chibok Schoolgirl Calls Her Father

When Dauda Yama retrieved his mobile phone from a neighbour’s house in January this year, he noticed a missed call from his daughter Saratu who had been missing for almost two years. The last time he spoke with Saratu was on April 14, 2014, when she rang to say men from the Islamist group Boko Haram had loaded

her and her classmates from the Government Girls’ Secondary School in Chibok in Borno State onto trucks.But when Yama returned the missed call that evening, a man answered. Yama hung up and rushed to the home of Yakubu Nkeki, chairman of the Association of Parents of the Abducted Girls from Chibok.“He asked me what he should do,” Nkeki, 58, a schoolteacher, whose 17-year-old adopted daughter Maimuna Yakubu Usman is among those missing, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Nkeki took the phone and redialled the number that was again answered by a man who said the phone belonged to his wife.

Reporting the matter to any of the armed personnel around Chibok was out of the question, so instead they informed a campaigner with the Bring Back Our Girls group, which advocates the return of the missing girls “now and alive”.

“We don’t know who to trust,” said Nkeki who has received physical threats for his efforts to keep the abduction of the Chibok girls in the headlines and the government’s sights with the abduction becoming a political issue for Nigerian leaders.

Nkeki and Yama dialled Saratu’s number a few more times after the initial success but the line repeatedly went dead. However, Nkeki says it rang when Yama tried again in February.

“The man warned him never to call his wife’s number again. He said if he is not careful, he will lose his life,” he said.

Source:ThisDay