The Nigerian Army’s Northeastern troops have declared the release of Lydia Simon, a Chibok girl who had been kidnapped and held for several years by terrorists from Boko Haram.
Lydia, who belonged to serial number 68 among the girls abducted and taken hostage from Chibok Secondary School, was saved, along with her three children, by the military during Operation Desert Sanity III near Ngoshe in the Gwoza Local Government Area of Borno State, according to a statement from the Department of Army Public Relations.
Lydia was five months pregnant at the time of her rescue and claimed to be from Pemi Town in Chibok.
The statement added that Nigerian Army troops deployed for counter-terrorism operations in the North Central on Tuesday, April 16, 2024, successfully ambushed and neutralised three terrorists who were on a mission to wreak havoc.
According to statistics released by the parents of the abducted schoolgirls, 271 students were kidnapped on that unfortunate day but 57 girls escaped shortly in 2014; 103 were released through the intervention of the federal government; 20 others were freed by the efforts of the state government; and 92 students are still in captivity.
There have been many mass kidnappings of schoolchildren since the Chibok incident, attracting global outrage. From Chibok to Dapchi, Kankara, Kagara, and many others, terrorists have in the last decade seized thousands of schoolchildren in mass kidnappings. While some of the students eventually regain freedom, others have been perpetually detained in the enclaves of their abductors and sexual abusers.
