The News Minute| November 1, 2014 | 3.50 pm IST
Two hundred and twenty Nigerian school girls abducted by Nigeria’s Islamic extremist group Boko Haram have converted to Islam and married off to militants, the group has claimed. In a video, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram denied that they had agreed to a ceasefire and added that the missing school girls had been married off.
Al Jazeera reports that in a video released on Friday Shekau said, "don't you know the over 200 Chibok schoolgirls have converted to Islam? They have now memorised two chapters of the Koran, "We have married them off. They are in their marital homes,"
Shekau was in military attire while he spoke in the video. “"We have not made ceasefire with anyone... We did not negotiate with anyone... It's a lie. It's a lie. We will not negotiate. What is our business with negotiation? Allah said we should not." He added as per a report in The Telegraph.
Though news about the marriages has been reported since April the Nigerian government had rejected it.
According to The Guardian report on April 29, relatives of the girls knew about mass weddings involving insurgents and some of the abducted girls.
“Mass weddings involving insurgents and some of the girls abducted two weeks ago"We have heard from members of the forest community where they took the girls. They said there had been mass marriages and the girls are being shared out as wives among the Boko Haram militants," Said Dawah, one of the abducted girl’s uncle, told the Guardian.
BBC reported on October 27 that the militants had forced abducted girls to go to the front line to help fight the military
The reports also say that a senior aide of the President Goodluck Jonathan said that an agreement had been reached to free the schoolgirls. On October 17 Nigeria’s military chief had announced that Boko Haram had agreed to an immediate cease-fire to end a five-year rebellion that has killed thousands. But attacks and abductions have been continuing. In the video released Shekau denied this agreement on ceasefire.
220 Nigerian schoolgirls were snatched by Boko Haram militants from the north-eastern Nigerian village of Chibok on April 14, 2014.