Nigeria's Buhari vows support for freed Chibok girls

PanARMENIAN.Net - Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday, May 7 vowed to help to 82 schoolgirls who have been freed from more than three years of Boko Haram captivity after a prisoner swap, AFP reports.

The girls -- who were among more than 200 kidnapped in 2014 from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, northeast Nigeria -- travelled to the capital Abuja a day after their release to meet Buhari.

"I cannot express in a few words how happy I am to welcome our dear girls back to freedom," Buhari said in a statement, pledging that the presidency would "personally supervise" authorities charged with ensuring the girls' "health, education, security and general well-being".

Presidential aide Bashir Ahmad tweeted a photograph of the girls, most of whom were sitting on the floor of Buhari's official residence, as the president sat in an armchair dressed in white traditional robes.

The meeting came shortly before Buhari was whisked out of the country on Sunday evening after weeks of concern over his health, heading to London for "follow-up medical consultation", according to his spokesman Femi Adesina.

The teenagers, who had been taken to a medical facility for checks after arriving in Abuja by military helicopter, met with the president for about 45 minutes, said an AFP reporter at the scene.

Adesina said they had now been "handed over to those who will supervise their rehabilitation".

He did not comment on how many imprisoned members of Boko Haram -- whose fight to create a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria has left at least 20,000 dead since 2009 -- had been released in the swap.

But AFP estimated that at least three suspected senior commanders, all of them Chadian nationals, were handed over.

Information Minister Lai Mohammed said he could not confirm claims that as many five militants were released.

Boko Haram fighters stormed the girls' school on the evening of April 14, 2014, and kidnapped 276 teenaged girls who were preparing to sit high school exams.

Fifty-seven managed to escape in the hours that followed but the remaining 219 were held by the group.