- Title: NIGERIA-VIOLENCE/GIRLS FILE Nigeria marks 500 days since Chibok girls kidnapping
- Date: 27th August 2015
- Summary: VARIOUS OF WOMEN PRAYING
- Embargoed: 11th September 2015 13:00
- Keywords:
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA3RENXFJOLLR9T5VDDFQ7L577Y
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: THIS EDIT CONTAINS MATERIAL THAT WAS ORIGINALLY 4:3
Nigeria marked on Thursday (August 27) 500 days since Boko Haram kidnapped over 200 schoolgirls in the northeastern Nigerian town of Chibok.
The Bring Back Our Girls group will hold a march in the capital Abuja with a candle-lit procession.
The Islamist militant group kidnapped some 270 girls and women from a school in Chibok a year ago.
More than 50 eventually escaped, but at least 200 remain in captivity, along with scores of other girls kidnapped before the Chibok girls.
The militants' actions in Chibok caused an international outcry.
Boko Haram, whose name roughly translates as 'Western education is sinful', has killed thousands and displaced some 1.5 million people during a six-year campaign to carve out an Islamic state in northern Nigeria.
A joint offensive by Nigeria and its neighbours has succeeded in driving the group from most of the positions they controlled earlier this year, reversing militants' gains that forced Nigeria to delay its February presidential election.
The "Bring Back Our Girls" campaign group is calling for the Nigerian government to take the necessary steps in ensuring the Chibok girls are rescued, according to its media co-ordinator, Bukky Shonibare.
In May last year, Boko Haram militants offered a prisoner swap to release the girls, but the proposal was rejected by the government.
President Goodluck Jonathan has been pilloried at home and abroad for his slow response to the kidnapping and for his inability to quell the violence by the Islamist militants, seen as the biggest security threat to Africa's biggest economy.
Several rounds of negotiations with Boko Haram have been attempted in recent years but they have never achieved a peace deal, partly because the group has several different factions. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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