"I was heartbroken after watching a video clip of our daughters abducted by the Boko Haram insurgents and shed tears," one of the parents of
the abducted Chibok schoolgirls said yesterday.
He said since the death of his mother, there was never a time he felt so devastated than after
watching the video and described their forced conversion to Islam as an act that took the girls to a " new world".
The parent who concealed his identity for security reasons was speaking to BBC Hausa radio.
"Yes, I watched the video. Tears suddenly came out of my eyes, a headache spontaneously
overwhelmed me," he said.
But when asked whether he was able to recognise any of the girls he knew, the father said "the
manner in which I watched the video, I could not identify the girls, because of the tears in my face.
"But I quickly contacted home and told them to tune in their TVs and watch this video. I told them to carefully look if they could identify some of the girls.
"Up to now, no one told me that has seen his daughter from the video."
On the conversion of the girls to Islam, he said "those girls, 90 - 95 percent of them are Christians, but from what I watched, they appear to be in (an
Muslim) veils and some of them observing prayers.
"They (insurgents) have taken them to a new world, which they were not before, because they are
Christians.
Another parent also narrated how he felt about the video, saying that the issue of religion could not have been done under such circumstances.
"The issue of religion has its conditions. If they accepted it with good minds, then their conversion would be seen as acceptable one.
But if they were forced to renounce their beliefs that is entirely different thing," said the parent over the conversion
of the girls by the insurgents.
He said after watching the video, he could not recognise any of the girls because "I didn't know
the girls, because I did not live there.
It was my daughter that is involved. So if I had seen the face
of my daughter, I would have recognised her. "
No comments:
Post a Comment