Nigeria: Militant group says kidnapped schoolgirls to be sold

Lagos: Nigeria’s Islamic extremist leader is threatening to sell hundreds of teenage girls abducted from a school in the remote northeast of the country three weeks ago. Abubakar Shekau for the first time also claimed responsibility for the 15 April mass abduction, in a video received by The Associated Press on Monday. “I abducted your girls,” he said. And, “By Allah, I will sell them in the marketplace.” Nigeria’s police have said more than 300 girls were abducted: 276 remain in captivity and 53 have managed to escape. [caption id=“attachment_1509495” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Screengrab of the video obtained by AFP shows the leader of the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau delivering a speech. AFP/Boko Harem[/caption] Boko Haram on 14 April stormed an all-girl secondary school in the village of Chibok, in Borno state, then packed the teenagers, who had been taking exams, onto trucks and disappeared into a remote area along the border with Cameroon. The brazenness and sheer brutality of the school attack has shocked Nigerians, who had been growing accustomed to hearing about atrocities in an increasingly bloody five-year-old Islamist insurgency in the north. Boko Haram, now seen as the main security threat to Africa’s leading energy producer, is growing bolder and extending its reach. The kidnapping occurred the same day as a bomb blast, also blamed on Boko Haram, that killed 75 people on the edge of Abuja and marked the first attack on the capital in two years. The militants repeated that attack a week later in almost exactly the same spot, killing 19 people and wounding 34 in the suburb of Nyanya. The girls’ abductions have been hugely embarrassing for the government and threaten to distract attention from its first hosting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) for Africa, this week. The apparent powerlessness of the military to prevent the attack or find the girls in three weeks has triggered anger and protests in the northeast and in Abuja. On Sunday, authorities arrested a leader of a protest last week in Abuja that had called on them to do more to find the girls. The arrest has further fuelled outrage against the security forces. In a televised “media chat” late on Sunday, President Jonathan pledged that the girls would soon be found and released, but also admitted he had no clue where they were. AP and Reuters