No thread regarding #Bringourgirlsback?

toast1985

toast1985

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Militants seized about 230 girls in the dead of the night at a high school in the nation's far northeast, a hotbed for Islamist group Boko Haram.

Armed men herded the girls out of bed and forced them into trucks on April 16 in the town of Chibok. The convoy of trucks then disappeared into the dense forest bordering Cameroon.

Roughly 200 girls are still missing, although the authorities and parents differ on the number.

Nigerians have rallied for days to criticize the government's handling of the rescue efforts. Hundreds wept and chanted "bring back our girls" during protests in the capital of Abuja on Wednesday. A day later, protesters gathered in Lagos.

Shortly after the abductions last month, frustrated Chibok residents went into the forest in motorbikes to search for the girls.

During their nine-hour trek, they never saw a single soldier in the forest where authorities believe the militants took the girls, said Enoch Mark, whose daughter and two nieces were among the kidnapped.

"A total of 230 parents registered the names of their daughters who were missing on the day of the kidnap," said Asabe Kwambura, principal of the Government Girls Secondary School. "From my records, 43 girls have so far escaped on their own from their kidnappers. We still have 187 girls missing."
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What's NT's take on this?

I've known about this since it's occurred. I'm more so concern with the Nigerian Gov't inept attempts to deal with Boko Haram.
 
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as a nigerian and a muslim, i am disgusted. I do not have all of the facts so i cannot pass judgment yet but in any case, young children getting kidnapped is beyond horrific.
 
That really is crazy. I know it's easy to talk behind a computer but where's a task force to find them? Is this really not on their government's list?
 
mean.gif
 
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ol-girls-forced-to-marry-captors-9308958.html

Girls and young women who were kidnapped from a school in Nigeria are reportedly being paid to marry their captors, according to a civic organisation.

Parents say the girls are being given 2,000 naira (£7) to marry Boko Haram militants, according to Halite Aliyu of the Borno-Yobe People's Forum.

“The latest reports are that they have been taken across the borders, some to Cameroon and Chad,” Aliyu said.  However, it was not possible to verify the reports regarding more than 200 missing girls who were kidnapped in the northeast by the Boko Haram terrorist network two weeks ago.

“Some of them have been married off to insurgents. A medieval kind of slavery. You go and capture women and then sell them off,” community elder Pogu Bitrus of Chibok, the town where the girls were abducted, told the BBC Hausa Service.

The  Borno-Yobe People's Forum was alerted to the alleged mass weddings by residents of the Sambisa Forest, on Nigeria's border with Cameroon, where the terrorist group is known to have hideouts.
 

The report comes as terrorist network Boko Haram gathered to negotiate the students' fate, and is demanding an unspecified ransom for their release, a Borno state community leader told reporters.

He added that the message released by the abductors on Wednesday included the claim that two of the girls have died from snake bites.

The message was sent to a member of a presidential committee mandated last year to mediate a ceasefire with the Islamic extremists, said the civic leader speaking on a condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to publicly discuss the talks.

As many of the girls remain missing, hundreds of women marched on Wednesday to Nigeria's National Assembly to protest against the lack of action to help being offered the students. Hundreds more also marched in Kano, Nigeria's second city in the north.

“The leaders of both houses said they will do all in their power but we are saying two weeks already have past, we want action now,” said activist Mercy Asu Abang.

Nigerians have harnessed social media to protest, trending under the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls.

A federal senator from the region said the military is aware of the movements of the kidnappers and the girls.

“What bothered me the most is that whenever I informed the military where these girls were, after two to three days they were moved from that place to another. Still, I would go back and inform them on new developments,” Sen. Ahmad Zanna is quoted as saying at the Nigerian online news site Persecond News.

Additional reporting by Associated Press
 
RUSTLENOMICS said:
are we supposed to send money so they can be freed? 
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Won't be surprised if the Nigerian community reaches out to the United States due to their government's ineptitude and unwillingess to do anything about it.
 
Best believe the Nigerian government is pisssssssed this went public. President Jonathan tried to say Boko Haram had been all but defeated as recently as last October.

Yea right.

If this hadn't made international news they wouldn't even be acting on it.
 
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http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/05/world/africa/nigeria-abducted-girls/index.html?sr=sharebar_twitter

"I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah." Boko Haram leader says of kidnapped Nigerian girls

(CNN) -- Fears for the fate of more than 200 Nigerian girls turned even more nightmarish Monday when the leader of the Islamist militant group that kidnapped them announced plans to sell them.

"I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah," a man claiming to be Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video first obtained by Agence France-Presse.

"There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell. I will sell women. I sell women," he continued, according to a CNN translation from the local Hausa language.

Boko Haram is a terrorist group receiving training from al Qaeda affiliates, according to U.S. officials. Its name means "Western education is sin." In his nearly hourlong, rambling video, Shekau repeatedly called for Western education to end.

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"Girls, you should go and get married," he said.

The outrageous threat means the girls' parents' worst fears could be realized. Parents have avoided speaking to the media for fear their daughters may be singled out for reprisals.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said the video "does appear legitimate."

The tape won't intimidate or deter Nigeria from efforts to save the kidnapped girls, the Nigerian government said.

"It is disheartening that someone would make such a terrible boast," Doyin Okupe, spokesman for President Goodluck Jonathan, said in an interview with CNN.

"It is to be expected of terrorists," he added. "No group can affect our resolve. We will see this through to the end. We have the commitment and capacity to get this done. No matter what this takes, we will get these girls."

On Sunday, Jonathan vowed, "Wherever these girls are, we'll get them out."

But he also criticized the girls' parents, saying they weren't cooperating fully with police.

"What we request is maximum cooperation from the guardians and the parents of these girls. Because up to this time, they have not been able to come clearly, to give the police clear identity of the girls that have yet to return," he said.

Nigeria's finance minister responds to criticism

Weeks after the girls' April 14 kidnapping, Africa's most populous country seems to be no closer to finding them, triggering complaints of ineptitude -- some of which are expressed on Twitter with the globally trending hashtag #BringBackOurGirls.

Nigeria's finance minister said Monday that her country's government remains committed to finding the girls, but should have done a better job explaining the situation to the public.

"Have we communicated what is being done properly? The answer is no, that people did not have enough information," Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told CNN's Richard Quest.

Revealing details about the investigation is tricky, she said, "because you are dealing with people that you don't know, and you don't know...what they might do to these girls."

On Sunday, about 100 demonstrators gathered outside the Nigerian High Commission in London, chanting, "Bring them back!" and "Not for sale!"

Crowds from Los Angeles to London rallied Saturday as well.

"We need to take ownership as if this happened in Chicago or this happened in Washington, D.C. We need to be talking about this," Nicole Lee, outgoing president of the TransAfrica Forum, told CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper."

"I think people are doing that. It's catching fire."

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton weighed in on Twitter over the weekend.

"Access to education is a basic right & an unconscionable reason to target innocent girls," she wrote Sunday. "We must stand up to terrorism. #BringBackOurGirls."

Militants attacked school last month

According to accounts, armed members of Boko Haram overwhelmed security guards at a school last month, pulled the girls out of bed and forced them into trucks. The convoy of trucks then disappeared into the dense forest bordering Cameroon.

On Friday, Nigerian authorities updated the number of girls kidnapped to 276. At least 53 of the girls escaped, leaving 223 in the hands of their captors, police said.

Authorities said the number of missing girls could grow as police fill in spotty school enrollment records.

Families had sent their girls to the rural school in Chibok for a desperately needed education. The northeastern town is part of Borno state, where 72% of primary-age children never attended school, according to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria.

It's even worse for girls than boys. "In the North particularly, the gender gap remains particularly wide and the proportion of girls to boys in school ranges from 1 girl to 2 boys to 1 to 3 in some states," UNICEF says.

Twelve northern states follow Sharia law.

In recent years, Boko Haram has carried out dozens of attacks, killing thousands of people at schools, churches, police stations, government buildings and elsewhere. Targets include Christians, senior Islamic figures critical of Boko Haram and people the group believes are engaged in "un-Islamic" behavior, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom says.

Boko Haram has gained training in weapons and communications from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in recent years. This helped it move from little-noticed attacks to more spectacular ones, including against Western targets and the Nigerian government, which it seeks to overthrow, U.S. authorities say. In 2011, it carried out an attack with IEDs on the United Nations headquarters in Abuja.

It's unclear just how big the group is. The U.S. State Department says Boko Haram's membership estimates "range from the hundreds to a few thousand." A U.S. government report in December 2011 found that a "consistent lack of reliable reporting on Boko Haram has contributed to the difficulty in assessing its size, makeup, and goals."

Crisis unfolds as Nigeria hosts World Economic Forum

Though Nigeria has Africa's largest economy, driven largely by oil, poverty remains widespread: Nearly 62% of the country's nearly 170 million people live in extreme poverty, according to the CIA World Factbook.

That dichotomy takes center stage this week as a World Economic Forum meeting convenes Wednesday in Nigeria's capital of Abuja. The country "already plays a crucial role in advancing the continent's growth; yet it is also emblematic of the challenges of converting natural wealth into solutions that address persistent social challenges," the World Economic Forum on Africa says on its website.

Okonjo-Iweala, the finance minister, told CNN that Nigeria's intense efforts to find the girls have nothing to do with the high-profile event.

"We are doing things because we are Nigerians, and we have to solve our own problems. These are our daughters. It's like it's my daughter missing. Every single one of those girls is my daughter," Okonjo-Iweala said. "I wake up in the morning depressed when I know that they have not been brought back home. The President wakes up depressed, because he came from a poor family, and without education he would never been where he is today."

Nigerian authorities, she said, are doing everything possible to find the girls -- and they're asking for help.

"Any international organization, any country that has different technology, ways of detecting, please let them help us to get these girls back," she said.

The United States is sharing intelligence with Nigeria to help in the search, according to a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the situation.

"We are sharing intelligence that may be relevant to this situation. You are going to see a focus on this in all three channels of government: diplomatic, intelligence and military," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information.

Police vs. protesters?

Police in Abuja denied having arrested a leader of a protest over the weekend that was critical of the Nigerian government's efforts. In a statement, police said they "invited" Nyadar Naomi Mutah, a native of Chibok, for a "fact-finding interview." She cooperated and "was immediately allowed to return home to her loved ones," police said.

But Aminu Mahmoud, a lawyer representing Mutah, said her client was arrested Sunday without charge.

Fellow protest organizer Hadiza Usman said that during a session called by first lady Patience Jonathan to meet with protesters, the first lady recognized Mutah and said "let's keep you aside for now."

It was not clear whether that had anything to do with Mutah's later going to the police station.

In its statement on the matter, Abuja police also said security agencies "are leaving no stone unturned" in an attempt to ensure that the children are rescued.
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Meanwhile, the Nigerian government's busy blaming the parents of the girls, arresting citizens who marched in protest of the kidnappings, criminalizing homosexuality, trying to ban abortion, and stoning to death women who were the victims of rape because they "committed adultery."

The cradle of civilization y'all!!!
 
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And Boko Haram has been making a mockery of the Nigerian Government for close to a year now.
 
it doesn't seem nt cares.

it's interesting to see US senators demanding world involvement now though. boko haram isn't big enough to survive outside governments stepping in (they're a very regional organization that does what they do because they know it only affects poor northern nigerian farmers.)

but the idea of world governments setting foot in the matters of nigeria is terrifying.

interesting that other jihadi/terrorist organizations are condemning boko haram for "doing too much."
 
Terrible situation. Not at all surprised by Nigeria's government's failure to do anything to resolve this. 
 
This is a horrible thing going on.... but it's crazy to me that people are in such an "uproar" considering these kind of actions have been going on for years throughout all of Africa.
 
tyisny said:
This is a horrible thing going on.... but it's crazy to me that people are in such an "uproar" considering these kind of actions have been going on for years throughout all of Africa.
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Over 230 girls kidnapped from their beds IN SCHOOL in the same town and sold into slavery all at once? And no one did anything to stop it or rescue them?

Where has anything like this happened anywhere in the past 50+ years?
 
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