Chibok girls on my mind, by Onyeka Onwenu

My body reacts in a peculiar way when I have something heavy on my mind. I am unable to sleep and will have no peace until I offload. That is why I am writing this at 2 a.m. on Friday morning, April 15, 2016, while monitoring the Democratic Party Presidential Debate in NY, on CNN.

I have the plight of Chibok girls on my mind. For two years now, Nigeria has been tagged with the horrendous event of the kidnapping of nearly 300 secondary school girls from Chibok, Borno State, in Nigeria’s beleaguered North East, by the terrorist group Boko Haram. Many had given up on the Chibok girls, believing that after two years, they must have been sold off, forcibly married, raped, impregnated, used as human shield and deployed as suicide bombers, as their abductors had threatened.

However, the appearance of a video clip, showing 15 of the girls, released by a Boko Haram Chief negotiator and identified by some of their parents, has raised some hope around the world that at least some of the girls are still alive. This is a welcome development.