The over 200 girls abducted from Government Secondary School, Chibok, in Borno State, may have exposed been exposed to radicalization by their captors, the Boko Haram insurgents, who are now using them for suicide bombings, Sunday Vanguard is reporting.
The newspaper quoted a source, who has contacts within the top hierarchy of the terrorist group.
The source spoke about the possibility that the girls had been indoctrinated by the terrorists in the last three months of their captivity, hypnotized and sent into various parts of Nigeria with a view to executing deadly missions.
The source spoke on the backdrop of the introduction of a new dimension to the terror attacks especially in the northern parts of Nigeria – the use of teenage female suicide bombers. Just last week, two of the attacks in Kano State were carried out by female suicide bombers even as the police in Katsina State arrested two girls between the ages of 10 and 18, alongside their male companion in Funtua. The girls had suicide bomb vests on them when they were apprehended.
The source, who argued that it may be difficult to change the radical orientation of the girls, pointed out that may now see their malevolent disposition as an act of righteousness.
“It may shock you to know that some of the girls being used for suicide bombings in parts of the North are among those taken from Chibok in April this year”, the source said.
Continuing, the source insisted that “it is rather unfortunate that government wasted precious time in rescuing the girls either through negotiation with Boko Haram or other means possible.
“It was clear from the outset that the girls would not come out the same, after being kept with their unwanted hosts for a long time”, the source told Sunday Vanguard.
Although the Federal Government said, last Wednesday, that the Chibok girls were not among the female bombers that attacked Kano in recent times, it did not provide any concrete evidence to prove this claim.
At a media briefing in Abuja, Coordinator of the National Information Centre, Mr. Mike Omeri, shot down the suggestion that the 219 school girls still in the captivity of Boko Haram insurgents, could have turned suicide bombers.
