Nigerian pupils being married off

Nigerian officials have blamed the known violent and extremist Islamic group Boko Haram for the abduction and now reported forced-marriage of almost 190 schoolgirls who went missing from a Nigerian boarding school over two weeks ago.

CBS reports the girls have been sold to Boko Haram militants for $2,000 Naira ($14 NZD). Information sent to the girls’ families from neighbouring ‘forest communities’ have parents and a growing community of international onlookers worrying the girls have been “shared” throughout Africa. A CBS reports “that they have been taken across the borders, some to Cameroon and Chad”.

Nigerian authorities have not yet confirmed this officially, but the girls’ parents are said trust the information sent to them by witnesses and relations from neighbouring towns to Chibok, the small town in Borno state where the abduction occurred.

The Guardian spoke to one farmer on the condition of anonymity, who said that insurgents had paid leaders dowries and fired celebratory gunshots after conducting mass wedding ceremonies on Saturday and Sunday.

“It’s unbearable. Our wives have grown bitter and cry all day. The abduction of our children and the news of them being married off is like hearing of the return of the slave trade,” Yakubu Ubalala, whose 17- and 18-year-old daughters Kulu and Maimuna are among the disappeared, told the Guardian.

There are further concerns that the girls will be used in the human trafficking trade. The Guardian has reported former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s calls for international help in recovering the pupils, aged from 16 to 18 years old.

“Two hundred girls have been abducted, kidnapped, taken into a forest area, and their parents don't know whether they are about to be murdered, or used as sex slaves, or about to be trafficked into other countries,” said Brown.

Boko Haram’s name means ‘Western education is forbidden’ and has reportedly been terrorising northeast Nigeria for the past five years; prior to this gross abduction they’ve reportedly killed hundreds of students by attacking and burning down their schools.

Overshadowing the fate of these schoolgirls in the press is the bomb explosion in Nigeria’s capital Abuja on April 14, which killed at least 75 people and wounded 141. The BBC has reported another car bombing yesterday has killed at least nine people in Abuja. 

On Wednesday hundreds of people, mostly woman, marched through the streets demanding the Nigerian government take serious action to recover the lost daughters from the boarding school.