Schoolgirls kidnapped in Nigeria are being smuggled into neighbouring countries and forced to marry Islamist extremists for £8 each, according to a leader of the town from where they were abducted.
At least 200 girls were taken in the middle of the night by heavily armed men from the dormitories of their secondary school in Chibok, two weeks ago, and ordered into the Sambisa Forest Reserve.
A few dozen are believed to have fled their captors but others have reportedly been seen crossing the border into Cameroon. Others have been seen being transported by ferry to Lake Chad.
Their kidnappers are thought to be members of Boko Haram, the jihadist group wreaking terror in much of Nigeria’s northern region. Its name means “western education is forbidden”.
Pogo Bitrus, a community elder in Chibok, said that the captors were selling the girls into servitude by forcing them to marry other members of the extremist group.
“They ferried them in canoes to Cameroon and Chad republic after they were wedded off to Boko Haram members who bid and paid 2,000 naira (£8) each as dowries on their heads,” he said.
“The dowry was paid to their captors, the very people who abducted them from their school. One of them who married one of the girls took her to a border town close to Cameroon where villagers saw her.”
Most of the girls are now being held at “an area where the Boko Haram operates in Cameroon,” he said.
He described how the girls’ parents were “crying day and night” in anger at the government’s rescue effort.
Although around 40 girls have escaped, none has been rescued, as the Nigerian army falsely claimed: some jumped from trucks and some ran away later while their captors thought they were washing up.
Parents and vigilantes who searched for the girls deep in the Sambisa forest are raising money to return and “surround and eliminate” Boko Haram camps. They searched for the girls when they were first abducted, but said they were “too few” and unarmed, so had to turn back, with the Nigerian military turning down requests for assistance.
Boko Haram frequently targets schools in Borno and other northern states. Its members have abducted hundreds of women since the group was formed in 2009, smuggling them away for use as sex slaves and servants.
Organisers of a mass demonstration across Nigeria today are hoping a million women will turn out to put pressure on President Jonathan to redouble rescue efforts.
“If these captors are trying to achieve a political point, I think the best thing is for us to try to make sure that they don’t succeed, but from all indications they are succeeding, due to inaction of government. It is helping these people in achieving their objectives,” Mr Bitrus said.
