100-plus girls unwilling to leave Boko Haram, Chibok leader says

ABUJA, Nigeria — Nigeria’s government is negotiating the release of another 83 of the Chibok schoolgirls taken in a mass abduction two-and-a-half years ago, but more than 100 others appear unwilling to leave their Boko Haram Islamic extremist captors, a community leader said Tuesday.

The unwilling girls may have been radicalized by Boko Haram or are ashamed to return home because they were forced to marry extremists and have babies, Chairman Pogu Bitrus of the Chibok Development Association said in a telephone interview.

Bitrus said the 21 Chibok girls freed last week in the first negotiated release between Nigeria’s government and Boko Haram should be educated abroad, because they will probably face stigma in Nigeria.

All Nigerian institutions and the freed girls’ communities and families must “stand strong” to “protect them from stigma, ostracization and rejection,” the U.N. special rapporteurs on the sale of children, on slavery and on the right to health said in a statement Tuesday.