Hundreds of kidnapped Nigerian school girls reportedly sold as brides to militants for $12, relatives say

An unidentified mother cries out during a demonstration to raise awareness of kidnapped school girls 

Samson Dawah was nervous. For two weeks, he had waited for any bit of information regarding his niece, who was among the 234 Nigerian school girls likely kidnapped by the terrorist group Boko Haram. This week, he gathered his extended family. He had news but also an unusual request. He asked that the elderly not attend. He wasn’t sure they could bear what he had to say.
“We have heard from members of the forest community where they took the girls,” he told them, adding that there had been a mass marriage. ”They said there had been mass marriages and the girls are being shared out as wives among the Boko Haram militants.”


The girl’s father fainted, the Guardian reported, and has since been hospitalized. But the news got worse. Village elder Pogo Bitrus told Agence France Presse locals had consulted with “various sources” in the nation’s forested northeast. “From the information we received yesterday from Cameroonian border towns our abducted girls were taken… into Chad and Cameroon,” he said, adding that each girl was sold as a bride to Islamist militants for 2,000 naira — $12.

The Washington Post could not independently verify such claims, and the Nigerian defense ministry didn’t immediately return requests for comment Wednesday morning. But if true, the news would add another terrifying wrinkle to an already horrifying set of events that has galvanized the nation, spurred foreign leaders to take notice, and exposed the powerlessness of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration in the face of a radicalized and murderous militant group named Boko Haram.

In this April, 21 2014 photo, security walks past the burned government secondary school Chibok,
where gunmen abducted more than 200 students in Chibok, Nigeria. 

The group, for which Western education is anathema, has killed at least 2,300 people since 2010, according to estimates in journalistic and Amnesty International reports. In the first four months of this year alone, Amnesty International says 1,500 people have died in sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians.

But the girls’ capture and alleged sell-off constitutes one of its most disturbing actions yet. On April 14, scores of armed militants stormed a dormitory in Chibok at night, captured hundreds of girls, and disappeared back into the night. Since, the bungled search for them has lurched from one mistake to the next.

Source: Washington Post