Months after over a 100 schoolgirls from Dapchi, Yobe state (otherwise known as the Dapchi girls) were set free by the Boko Haram terrorists, it has now been revealed that the Nigerian government actually paid a huge ransom to get them free.
Earlier in the year, a hundred and six girls were abducted from their school in Dapchi and carted away.
A couple of weeks later, a hundred and five of them were released while one of them Leah Sharibu, who refused to renounce her Christian faith, was held back.
READ: 47 days of captivity: NCWS calls for Leah Sharibu’s release
Back then, there had been allegations that the Nigerian Government paid a huge ransom to get the Dapchi girls free, but this was smothered by information Minister Lai Mohammed who said that the reports were false.
He said: ‘’It is not true that we paid ransom for the release of the Dapchi girls, neither was there a prisoner swap to secure their release,
“What happened was that the abduction itself was a breach of the ceasefire talks between the insurgents and the government; hence it became a moral burden on the abductors. Any report that we paid ransom or engaged in prisoner swap is false.”
A new report by the United Nations has brought this statement into scrutiny
The report was recently submitted to the UN Security Council on Boko Haram and related terrorist organisations and in it claimed that Nigeria paid a ‘large ransom’ to free the Dapchi girls.
The UN report is titled “22nd Report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team”, related to Resolution 2368 (2017) regarding “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant – ISIL – (Da’esh), Al-Qaida and associated individuals and entities.”
“In Nigeria, 111 schoolgirls from the town of Dapchi were kidnapped on 18 February 2018 and released by ISWAP on 21 March 2018 in exchange for a large ransom payment,” the report stated.
This disputes Lai Mohammed’s claim.
The report also went on to examine other means in which the Boko Haram terrorist organization got its funding including extortion, charitable donations, smuggling, remittances and kidnapping
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