Nigeria’s Chibok School Girl Kidnapping Six Months Later

(Council on Foreign Relations) – On the night of April 14-15, 2014 up to three hundred girls from different schools in northeastern Nigeria gathered for their final examinations in the town of Chibok. Instead of taking their tests,they were kidnapped. Three weeks later, on May 5, Boko Haram’s Abubakar Shekau claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. Some victims managed to escape, and the numbers still held in captivity are soft. The figure most often cited by the media is 276. Especially in the aftermath of Shekau’s video, with threats to sell the girls into slavery, there was international outrage. Even First Lady Michelle Obama publicly rallied around the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Israel, and other countries all offered assistance. There was widespread criticism of the lethargy of the Jonathan administration in taking concrete action.

Link