CNN obtained a video of some of the “Chibok Girls” sent to negotiators by their captors as a “proof of life.”
One by one, each girl calmly states her name and explains that she was taken from Chibok Government Secondary School. Only the occasional hesitation betrays a flicker of fear and emotion.
As the two minute clip comes to an end, one of the girls, Naomi Zakaria, makes a final — apparently scripted — appeal to whoever is watching, urging the Nigerian authorities to help reunite the girls with their families.
“I am speaking on 25 December 2015, on behalf of the all the Chibok girls and we are all well,” she says, stressing the word “all.” Her intonation seems to imply that the 15 teens seen in the video have been chosen to represent the group as a whole.
