ABUJA, Nigeria — A second
kidnapping of schoolgirls in Nigeria’s northeast by Islamist militants put new
pressure on the country’s troubled government, which had been hoping to
showcase its emergence as Africa’s largest economy this week but instead has
been forced to confront its failure to contain a growing insurgency in its
north.
Men suspected of being fighters from the
radical group Boko Haram kidnapped 11 more girls in Nigeria’s northeast, local
officials said Tuesday, an intensification of its campaign against female
education and the Nigerian government since the abduction of hundreds of
schoolgirls three weeks ago.
Protesters in Lagos,
Nigeria, on Monday called
on the government to do more to rescue the kidnapped girls.Credit Sunday Alamba/Associated Press
The
authorities here — and particularly the military, itself implicated in numerous
massacres of civilians — appear to be floundering in their response to a crisis
that social media have transformed into a cause célèbre. The new kidnappings
underlined the inability of the Nigerian government to protect civilians from
the growing insurgency. Not a single girl has been rescued so far.
A viral social media campaign, using the
hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, has brought new infamy to Boko Haram, which has
been operating in Nigeria
for more than a decade. The group’s goal, never clearly enunciated, is to
radically undermine the secular Nigerian state.
But never in a five-year campaign of
bombings, civilian massacres and assaults on state schools have the attacks so
shaken the government. The heightening concerns have led to daily
antigovernment protests, which continued Tuesday with a demonstration outside defense
headquarters here. In a sign of the government’s nervousness, several of the
protest leaders were briefly arrested Monday.
In the latest kidnappings, more girls were
taken from their homes late Sunday in the villages of Warabe and Wala, said
Hamba Tada, an official in the area. Heavily armed militants descended from
surrounding hills, stealing grain and livestock belonging to villagers, forcing
the girls, ages 12 to 15, into an 18-seater bus, and warning locals not to
alert the authorities.
Another
local official confirmed the new abductions, though the area’s top police
official, Lawan Tanko denied they had taken place. “By our record it’s not
true,” he said in an interview from Maiduguri, the capital
of BornoState.