Chibok 'ambassadors' vow to fight for hostages' release

Abuja, Apr 14: The 219 schoolgirls who marched through Nigeria's capital today said they will never tire of fighting for the rights of their kidnapped "sisters" who cannot speak for themselves.

Each girl carried a placard bearing the name of one of the hostages still missing after they were kidnapped by Boko Haram Islamist militants in the northeast town of Chibok one year ago.

"Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days and we are still calling out loud and clear, stronger than ever," said Rebecca Ishaku, one of the marchers, who have been dubbed "Chibok Ambassadors", on the first anniversary of the kidnapping. "We will not get tired of calling for the release of our sisters," she said. The group began its march at the Unity Fountain in central Abuja, where members of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) campaign have met nearly every day since May.

It was one of several demonstrations held across the world, from a girls school in New Zealand to Paris, with plans in place to light up the Empire State Building in New York later today. The BBOG group, with its corresponding Twitter campaign, was largely responsible for calling the world's attention to the mass abduction in Chibok, which came to symbolise the brutality of Boko Haram's six-year uprising.

In the early weeks, the campaign gained momentum through support from US First Lady Michelle Obama, Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, world leaders and pop stars. But even as the initial media firestorm faded, BBOG activists continued to gather each afternoon, demanding action from a Nigerian government accused of downplaying the hostage crisis for political reasons.

They faced violence from police and plain-clothed thugs, who sought to clear them out of the Unity Fountain park overlooked by the Transcorp Hilton, where Nigeria's political and business ultra-elite gather for meetings. Maureen Kabrik, a BBOG organiser, said she lay awake last night wondering if the girls even knew it had been a year since their abduction.

"Do they have a calendar that tells them how long they have been taken?... They have spent Sallah (Eid), Easter, Christmas with their abductors. It's painful," she told AFP. Nigeria's president-elect Muhammadu Buhari today cautioned he could not make promises on the return of the 219 missing schoolgirls. But he has vowed to combat Boko Haram more effectively than outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan whom he will succeed on May 29.

AFP