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Boko Haram

Abuja — Relatives of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram said they would hold a youth march and candle-lit vigil today to mark 500 days since the abductions. Boko Haram fighters stormed the Government Secondary School in the remote town of Chibok in Borno state on April 14 last year, seizing 276 girls who were preparing for end-of-year exams.

Fifty-seven escaped but nothing has been heard of the remaining 219 since May last year, when about 100 of them appeared in a Boko Haram video dressed in Muslim attire and reciting the Koran. Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has since said they have all converted to Islam and been “married off”.

The “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign said on Tuesday it would stage a “Chibok Girls Ambassador March” in the capital Abuja on the 500-day anniversary of the kidnappings, followed by a candle-lit procession. “Since 498 days that they’ve been missing… we failed them and they were taken and the best thing is for us to have rescued them that very day. And up until now, 498 days after, we still haven’t done that,” campaign spokesperson Aisha Yesufu said.

The mass abduction brought the brutality of the Islamist insurgency unprecedented worldwide attention and prompted a viral social media campaign demanding their release backed by personalities from US First Lady Michelle Obama to the actress Angelina Jolie. Western powers, including the US, have offered logistical and military support to Nigeria’s rescue effort, but there have been few signs of progress so far.

The military has said it knows where the girls are, but has ruled out a rescue effort because of the dangers to the girls’ lives. President Muhammadu Buhari, who came to power in May, has given his generals three months to crush the insurgency, blamed for killing more than 15,000 people and forcing some 1.5 million to flee their homes since 2009.

“It’s important that we actually begin to see visible action that leads to information that will persuade us that the girls are being found,” Oby Ezekwesili, a former education minister and also a spokeswoman for the campaign, said late on Monday. “A lot of intelligence work has been said to be going on and so we’re waiting with great anxiety especially considering that a three-month deadline has been given to the new security team to end Boko Haram.” Meanwhile, 10 suspected Boko Haram members went on trial in Chad yesterday over their alleged roles in twin attacks that killed 38 people in the capital N’Djamena in June.

It was the first Chadian trial involving the Nigeria-based Islamist group, which has in the past months stepped up attacks and suicide bombings in Nigeria and the neighbouring countries of Cameroon, Chad and Niger. They are accused of criminal conspiracy, killings, wilful destruction with explosives, fraud, illegal possessions of arms and ammunition, as well as using psychotropic substances, city prosecutor general Bruno Mahouli said.

The closed-door hearing is expected to last eight days. The accused include Nigerian national Mahamat Mustapha, also known as Bana Fanaye, who according to Chadian authorities was the mastermind behind the June 15 suicide attacks that struck a school and a police building in N’Djamena, killing 38 people and injuring over 100.

Shortly after Fanaye’s arrest in late June, Chad’s top prosecutor Alghassim Kassim said the suspect was the “ringleader of a network smuggling weapons and munitions between Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad”. Fanaye was also responsible for procuring weapons and “recruiting and managing Boko Haram members”, Kassim added. The June attacks in the Chadian capital were followed by another suicide blast at a market in July that killed 15 people.

Chad — which is part of a regional fightback against Boko Haram — has beefed up security in response to the bloodshed. The 8 700-strong force is not yet up and running. Meanwhile, two suspected Boko Haram members blew themselves up on Lake Chad while being pursued by the Chadian army, a military source said yesterday. There were no other casualties in Tuesday’s incident on the island of Kaiga-Ngouboua on the lake which is ringed by Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad.

In Nigeria, a Lagos court late last year convicted in secret three suspects on charges linked to Boko Haram and sentenced them to 25 years in jail. — AFP.