Nigeria marks three years since Chibok kidnaps

Nigerians held rallies in major cities yesterday to mark three years since the mass abduction of 276 schoolgirls by Boko Haram extremists.Spearheading the rallies was the Bring Back Our Girls movement, which has been urging the government of President Muhammadu Buhari to ramp up efforts to free the 195 girls still believed held by the radical Islamic group.One rally was being held in the capital Abuja, where Nigeria’s second most influential traditional Muslim leader, the Emir of Kano, was to make an address and lead prayers.Parents of the missing were congregating at the school where their daughters aged 12 to 17 were kidnapped in the northeastern village of Chibok on April 14, 2014.Participants were set to plant trees as a symbolic gesture in memory of the missing girls.Another rally was due in the country’s commercial centre Lagos.Fifty-seven girls escaped in the immediate aftermath of the kidnapping while three others were later found or rescued by the military.Some had babies in captivity.Last October, 21 were freed after negotiations between Boko Haram and the Nigerian government brokered by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Swiss government.The Chibok schoolgirls have become a symbol of the Boko Haram insurgency that began in 2009 and has left at least 20,000 people dead.Despite a military fight-back, villages near Chibok, which is 125km (80 miles) by road from the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, have seen a wave of suspected Boko Haram attacks in recent months.A presidential spokesman said on Wednesday that negotiations were ongoing with “foreign entities” for the release of those still held by the fundamentalist group active in Nigeria’s northeast and which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State (IS).As the country prepares to mark the third anniversary of the mass kidnapping yesterday, Garba Shehu told the BBC in a radio interview that there were ongoing negotiations to release the 195 girls believed still be being held by Boko Haram.“Talks are ongoing through other means with the help of some foreign entities to free more schoolgirls,” Shehu said during an interview with BBC Hausa. “These talks are going on with the help of some countries.”“You can recall the 21 schoolgirls were freed with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Swiss government officials who got involved in the negotiations. These two have not withdrawn their support in the negotiations,” Shehu said.“There are also other countries that are lending support to the negotiations by being involved in the talks,” he added.“(The) government is in constant touch through negotiations, through local intelligence to secure the release of the remaining girls and other abducted persons unharmed,” President Buhari said in a statement on Thursday. “On this solemn occasion, my appeal is that we must not lose hope on the return of our remaining schoolgirls.”Having started as an extremist sect, Boko Haram has mushroomed in recent years into an ultra-violent Islamist militant movement which uses mass kidnapping as a recruitment tool.In December, Buhari triumphantly announced the “final crushing” of the group, which he described as being “on the run” after an army offensive flushed them out of their stronghold in the huge Sambisa forest.Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau denied the claim and said that some of the abducted girls were killed in Nigerian airstrikes against his group.Support from abroad came in the shape of a British government statement on Friday.“We are working side by side with Nigeria in the fight against Boko Haram and call for the release of all those who have been taken,” a foreign ministry statement read.