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The Presidency has denied reports that another 21 Chibok girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014 were released on Thursday.
Some reports had said that the Chibok girls were brought to Yola International Airport in Yola, Adamawa State capital around 3pm on Thursday.
But President Muhammadu Buhari’s special assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, in a tweet, denied the report.
He tweeted:
To my friends spreading the news of a further release of Chibok Girls, we are not there yet.
The negotiations are ongoing and the Department of State Service, DSS is full of optimism that they will be successful.
Garba Shehu explained that the girls that were mistaken for another set of released Chibok girls were the ones released in October. He said they were being taken to Adamawa to spend Christmas with their families.
His words: Today, the DSS took the 21 Girls already secured to Yola, Adamawa State on their way home to celebrate the Christmas with their families.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian Army said on Wednesday that troops rescued over 1,880 civilians from a Boko Haram redoubt in the restive northeast in the past week and arrested hundreds of insurgents, a military commander said on Wednesday.