More foreign experts join search for abducted girls


Israeli counter-terrorism experts have joined the search for the Chibok girls,
presidential spokesman Reuben Abati said yesterday in a statement after Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to President Goodluck Jonathan.
Abati said Jonathan was “very optimistic that with the entire international
community deploying its considerable military and intelligence-gathering skills
and assets in support of Nigeria’s efforts to find and rescue the abducted Chibok
girls, success will soon be achieved”.
He said the President accepted the Israeli offer to send a team of counter-
terrorism experts to assist in the ongoing search and rescue operations.
“The President briefed Mr. Netanyahu on actions already being taken by Nigeria’s
armed forces and security agencies to locate and rescue the girls, saying that
Nigeria would be pleased to have Israel’s globally-acknowledged anti-terrorism
expertise deployed to support its ongoing operations.
“Mr. Netanyahu, who expressed Israel’s total condemnation of the mass
abductions, said the team of experts from his country, who will soon arrive in
Nigeria, will work in collaboration with teams from the United States and Britain
who are already in the country and their Nigerian counterparts to intensify the
search for the girls.
“He reaffirmed Israel’s willingness to give the government and people of Nigeria all
possible support and assistance to overcome terrorism and insecurity.”
The United States, Britain, France and China had earlier offered to help. The UK
and the US team are already in Nigeria, working with the military.
Close to 300 youngsters were kidnapped from a boarding school in Chibok, Borno
State on April 15. It is believed that 53 managed to escape, but 273 are still
missing.
One of the teenagers who escaped from the Islamic extremists has said the
kidnapping was “too terrifying for words”, and she is now scared to go back to
school.
Sarah Lawan, a 19-year-old science student, spoke yesterday as Nigerians
prayed for the safety of the 276 students still held captive. Their prayers were
joined by Pope Francis.
Lawan told The Associated Press that more of the girls could have escaped but
that they were frightened by their captors’ threats to shoot them. She spoke in the
Hausa language in a phone interview from Chibok, her home and the site of the
mass abduction.
The failure to rescue those who remain captive four weeks later has attracted
mounting national and international outrage. Last week, Nigeria accepted
international help in the search, after ignoring offers for weeks.
Pope Francis lent his voice to the ongoing social media campaign
#BringBackOurGirls.
The Pope asked Catholic faithful to pray for missing Chibok schoolgirls.
The Pope tweeted:
Let us all join in prayer for the immediate release of the schoolgirls kidnapped in
Nigeria. #BringBackOurGirls
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) May 10, 2014
Prime Minister David Cameron promised Sunday that Britain “will do what we can”
to help find the girls.
He made the comments as he held a sign bearing the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag
on the BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show.”
Cameron and Pope Francis are the latest high-profile supporters of the social
media campaign. U.S. first lady Michelle Obama tweeted a photo of herself with a
similar poster last week.
#BringBackOurGirls has become the most popular hashtag in Nigeria this year,
with the Twitter trend hitting over a million tweets. The hashtag has gone from a
local trend to receiving international attention in the last seven days.
The hashtag is also very popular on Facebook and Instagram, receiving over
150,000 posts on the latter.
It has been posted by a number of global celebrities and personalities, actress
Angelina Jolie and singer Chris Brown.
The International Criminal Court said the number and intensity of attacks has
risen sharply this year.
It called on Boko Haram to release the girls immediately.
“The troubling phenomenon of targeting females during conflict, this time, in Borno
state, cannot be tolerated and must be stopped,” said prosecutor Fatou
Bensouda. “No stone should be left unturned to bring those responsible for such
atrocious acts to justice, either in Nigeria or at the ICC.”
CIA Director John Brennan told the TV network Fusion that the United States is
doing “everything we can” to determine the girls’ location, a mission President
Barack Obama has made a priority.
Worldwide protest continued yesterday. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, the
Reverend Al Sharpton, and at least 200 local residents, and elected officials, all
representing a cross section of activists and concerned citizens, took part in a
rally in front of the Nigerian Consulate on Saturday afternoon. It was the second
such gathering in front of the Consulate.
The New York Mayor weighing in on the issue is significant for a locally elected
official in the U.S.
Most U.S. mayors and governors avoid speaking out on a global issue not
directly touching their jurisdiction, even one as controversial as the kidnapping of
the 200 plus female students in Nigeria.
That mayor de Blasio spoke out, and marched alongside fellow citizens will likely
change the tenor of the debate in America’s most international of cities. De Blasio,
who addressed the crowd of roughly 200, said the kidnappings in Borno State
“should be denounced around the world”. His wife and daughter at the march that
assembled in front of the consulate joined the mayor.
The Reverend Al Sharpton, and some members of his National Action Network
team in Harlem, took part in the march and rally, bringing further media attention
to the issue. Some Harlemites, like Lesha Sekou, marched the five-mile trek from
uptown to the mid-town Nigerian consulate. Sekou, an anti-gun violence
organiser, led a group of about 50 Harlem residents to the rally. She said that she
was there because the 200 plus Nigerian school girls were abducted at gunpoint.
Some Ghanaian women yesterday marched through the capital Accra, to demand
the release of the schoolgirls.
They presented a petition signed by over 300 people to the Nigerian High
Commissioner to Ghana, saying: “We are just a representative of the swelling
voices of Ghanaians and other people round the world who believe that any extra
second we spend not finding our girls is one second too many.”
They held placards, which read: “Bring back our girls”; “Release the girls now”;
and “We want action now’’.
One of the leaders of the Ghanaian women that marched, Eugenia Techie Menson,
Chief Executive Officer of Young Educators Foundation, said: “Girls have the basic
right to be educated and to be girls; girls have the inalienable right to be girls.”
The Nigerian High Commissioner to Ghana, Ademola Oluseyi Onafonoka, after
receiving the petition, said:”… Let me thank you for your out pouring of emotions,
solidarity, for your empathy; I am assuring you as a father that our daughters will
be found and brought back to all of us alive and well.’’
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has intensified
collaboration with the Federal Government to combat cross border terrorist
activities carried out by Boko Haram, ECOWAS Communication Director Sonny
Ugoh said yesterday.
Ugoh says the regional bloc is also working with other neighboring regional
organisations including the Economic Community of Central African States
(ECCAS) to improve security in their member states, following the girls’ abduction.
“There is a collective sense that ECOWAS is willing and determined to support the
Nigerian government to address this menace, because what affects one member
state affects the others; that is the spirit of the ECOWAS Integration project. There
is a sense of solidarity [and] the value for the support of each other,” said Ugoh.
His comments follow a U.N. Security Council demand for an unconditional release
of the girls abducted by Boko Haram militants.
The chairman of the ECOWAS commission, Ghanaian President John Dramani
Mahama, issued a solidarity statement to President Goodluck Jonathan to assure
him of the regional bloc’s support to combat the Boko Haram militants.
“There is recognition, both locally and internationally, that this is an unacceptable
behavior. And in response to that the international community has risen to
support the ECOWAS position,” said Ugoh. “ECOWAS is ready and willing to work
with the Nigerian government to see how this [violence] can be addressed, and
use the opportunity to also make a point about the need for us to now increase
collaboration within West Africa.”
“Some of the terrorism issues that we have to deal with have to do with the
situation in the Sahel. So there is a larger issue of the Sahel impact on [us],” said
Ugoh. “We are actively working to have a holistic response to these and then
working beyond West Africa with our neighbors to see how we can collaborate in
responding to the dynamics and the specifics of this in terms of the various
manifestation of terrorism in West Africa.”



Culled from The Nation