The Borno State Police Commissioner, Damian Chukwu, said on Monday that the 10 women released by Boko Haram recently were not police officers. “Only one of the abductees was a police officer,” Chukwu said.
He made this clarification while speaking with journalists in his office on Monday afternoon.
The presidency confirmed the release of 13 people over the weekend including three oil explorers from the University of Maiduguri.
The 10 women and the oil explorers were kidnapped in different incidents.
The police commissioner, however, restated his statement last year that “only one police woman, Inspector Fatsuma Haruna,” was abducted alongside other females accompanying the corpse of a deceased police woman to her home town in Lassa village of Askira-Uba local government areas of Borno State.
“I did mention it last year that when Boko Haram ambushed a military escorted convoy of travelers which also included a burial party taking a deceased police woman to her home town Lassa, one of the police women, Inspector Fatsuma Haruna, a close friend of the deceased assigned to accompany the corpse, was abducted by Boko Haram.
“It is not correct to say that ten police women were released by Boko Haram. We only have one policewoman among the released abductees. The other women, I believe, were relatives of the deceased police woman whose corpse was being transported to her home town before the convoy was ambushed,” the police commissioner said.
On February 7, three days before the negotiated release of the 13 abductees, including three geologists from the University of Maiduguri, Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, had, in his second YouTube video this year, boasted that he had ten police women still in his custody.