Dapchi village in Yobe State has been filled with excitement since some abducted pupils at the Government Girls Science and Technical College in the village regained their freedom.
They were released in the early hours of Wednesday.
One hundred and ten pupils were abducted from the school on February 19, 2018, by Boko Haram insurgents, while efforts to locate them by security agencies failed until they were released by their captors.
As of 8.50pm on Wednesday, the Federal Government had confirmed the release of 105 schoolgirls and a boy, making a total of 106 released persons.
Earlier, the Federal Government in a statement by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, had said 76 of the girls had been freed.
Later in an interview with State House correspondents at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Mohammed said 91 girls and a boy were freed by the terrorists.
However, in another statement, the minister said the number had increased to 101 with the documentation of more freed girls by security agencies.
The Minister of Information and Culture, in a late afternoon interview with journalists at the Air Force Base in Maiduguri, Bornu State, said the number had increased to 105.
The minister attributed the earlier changing figures released by the government to the fact that the “the girls went to their homes after they were released in Dapchi. What we have now is 105 girls and a boy; that makes it 106 persons released today (Wednesday).”
It was learnt that a pupil, a Christian, was still being held by the insurgents because she refused to be converted to Islam.
Soldiers, who were deployed in the town, were said to have made “tactical withdrawal” to allow the terrorists to have access to the village.
The military, which was apparently aware that a deal for the release of the captives had been brokered, had reportedly stationed a large detachment of soldiers in another part of the village since Tuesday.
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