Chibok Parents Prepare To Face Christmas Without Daughters

The parents of one of the kidnapped by Boko Haram sect Chibok schoolgirls describes how they prepare to face Christmas without her, declaring December 25, 2014, “a bad Christmas” because their family is still “incomplete”.

The parents, while speaking to CNN, said that the absence of their daughter at a holiday period likes this, saying she loved education too much to have been hurt by her quest for self-empowerment.

They said: “She is brilliant. She likes reading. Always, she liked to go to school,” her father said, before her mother added: “She used to tell me one day she would finish school and become somebody. She loved studies; she used to assist the younger ones with their homework. She used to fall asleep with her books in her arms.”

The father of the girl recollected that every Christmas, the family was always “complete and happy”, but it won’t be the case this time.

“One of us is not there, how can it be the same”? “There is nothing I can say; it has happened. It is a bad Christmas, but there is nothing we can do.”

The mother of one of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls.

They spoke about the pain of their other children, who are always asking if the kidnaped girl would ever come back.

“Her siblings know that she is not here. They themselves know what is happening, having come out of war,” her mother said.

“They keep asking me, ‘when is she coming back?’ But I keep telling them to keep trusting God, maybe He will hear us. I always feel pain inside of me, but I am trusting God that one day, she will come back.”

Her father added: “I tell the children that she will come back, they should keep praying and hoping that she is still alive and that she will come back.

“They will come back. They will come back. That many girls? If they are still alive on the face of the earth, they will come back.“