NIGERIA: An organisation called the Chibok Residents of Abuja demands the Nigerian government negotiates with Boko Haram for the release of around 200 abducted schoolgirls

Record ID: 236826

  • Title: NIGERIA: An organisation called the Chibok Residents of Abuja demands the Nigerian government negotiates with Boko Haram for the release of around 200 abducted schoolgirls
  • Date: 4th July 2014
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF NEWSPAPER HEADLINES VARIOUS OF PEOPLE AT NEWSPAPER STAND READING THE HEADLINES
  • Embargoed: 19th July 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Nigeria
  • Country: Nigeria
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA3BQ7CEW6OZ75QDNRSY8KTXK6P
  • Story Text: Nigerians appealed to their government to negotiate with Boko Haram militants to secure the release of over 200 schoolgirls who were kidnapped from a school in the northeast of the country in April.
    A group called the Chibok Residents of Abuja called a news conference in the Nigerian capital on Friday (July 4) to state their demands to the government.

    "The federal government should: one, go into immediate negotiation with the Boko Haram sect with a view to securing the safe release of the Chibok girls. Two, the immediate establishment of a rehabilitation centre in Chibok to address psychological, medical and traumatic effects of the abduction on parents, escaped and yet to be rescued girls and the Chibok community," said Pogu Bitrus, the chair of the Kibaku area development association, which covers Chibok.
    The girls were taking exams at a secondary school in the remote northeastern village of Chibok on April 14 when the Islamist gunmen surrounded it, loaded 276 of them onto trucks and carted them off, according to official figures.
    So far, 57 of the girls have been reunited with their families while 219 are still unaccounted for.
    The Nigerian government has been accused of not doing enough to rescue the girls.

    "We are now calling for the establishment of a whole battalion which will be adequate not only for protection of Chibok area but those environs, the Uba area, Lassa area where Lasaa fever was discovered. All those areas are under threat and they are adjoining Chibok and they need adequate protection," said Bitrus.
    The attack shocked Nigerians, who have grown used to hearing about atrocities in an increasingly bloody five-year-old Islamist insurgency in the north.
    The girls' abduction has also shone an international spotlight on the militants, whose violent struggle for an Islamic state in northern Nigeria has killed thousands and turned them into the biggest threat to security in Africa's top oil-producing state.
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