Search for Abducted Girls in Nigeria

Search for abducted Girls in Nigeria. Nigeria stepping up the efforts to search  for hundreds of schoolgirls, abducted last month, has deployed  two divisions of the army near Chad, Cameroon and Niger .  The air force had so far flown at least 250 sorties.

Specialist teams  including intelligence gathering, satellite imagery and hostage negotiations, have arrived from the US, UK and China.

Saudi Arabia's grand mufti Sheikh Abulaziz al-Sheikh said Boko Haram rebels who kidnapped the schoolgirls had "set up to smear the image of Islam".

International outrage has been  escalating  over the Nigeria's  ineffective effort to subdue Boko Haram.

Bring Back Our Girls

Bring Back Our girls. Boko Haram, the Nigerian terrorists ,  abducted 276 girls from a school dormitory , in the middle of the night,on 15 April .
Michelle Obama while condemning the  “unconscionable” act, said that she and President Obama had been personally touched by the incident.

“In these girls, Barack and I see our own daughters,” said Michelle. “It’s a story we see every day as girls around the world risk their lives to pursue their ambitions,” she  further said.

Islamist militant group Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau,   claiming full responsibility for the kidnapping  has  stated their intent to sell the children “in the market.” “I abducted your girls,I will sell them in the market” said the leader.

Boko Haram raided  Government Girls Secondary School in the village Chibok,  in northeastern Nigeria and  then took the girls to a remote border area in trucks.

The apparent inability of the country’s authorities to track down the girls and punish the kidnappers has caused both national and international outrage.

Boko Haram, is seeking to establish a sharia state, with the name translating as ‘Western education is sinful, " has been growing bolder in recent month. The  kidnapping occurred the same day as an explosion which killed 75 people on the outskirts of the capital Abuja .  The group has been responsible for some 1,500 deaths, so far in this year.

Nigeria

Nigeria,located in West Africa, is the Giant of Africa , both by population and economy . The country became independent  in 1960, after emerging from two British protectorates. It is seventh most populous country in the world,  inhabited by over 500 ethnic groups, of which the three largest are the Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba.
Population is roughly divided half in Christians( living in Central and South part) and Muslims( who live in Northern and south Western part.

Nigeria has been undergoing explosive population growth and has one of the highest growth and fertility rates in the world. By their projections, Nigeria is one of eight countries expected to account collectively for half of the world's total population increase from 2005–2050.

Petroleum plays a large role in the Nigerian economy.The country's oil reserves( 10 th largest in the world ) have played a major role in its growth and  is expected to become one of the world's top 20 economies by 2050. Nigeria is the 12th largest producer of petroleum in the world and the 8th largest exporter. The country joined OPEC in 1971.

Since independence the country has seen civil wars, military dictators and democratic government. Goodluck Jonathan is the current President. country is facing problem of corruption , mismanagement of oil and trade of stolen oil.

But the most serious of the problems are

a. Nigeria has the second highest number of new HIV infections in the world
b. insecurity in the minds of Christians by imposition of Islamic laws in Northern states, which made them flee.

c. Terrorism. Thousands of people have died over the past few years in communal attacks led by the al-Qaeda ally Boko Haram.
Abducting of hundreds of school girls are only the the most vicious in the series of brutal activities of Boko Haram.

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Nigeria ramps up search for missing girls - Africa - Al Jazeera English

Nigeria ramps up search for missing girls - Africa - Al Jazeera English