Nigeria: 63 Girls, Women Flee From Captors, 220 Still Missing

By Staff Writer

At least 63 Nigerian girls and women abducted by Islamic insurgents, Boko Haram two weeks ago have managed to escape, said Chibok local government chairman Pogu Bitrus on Monday July 7.

Nigerian security forces and federal government officials had denied reports of the mass abduction from three villages in the northeast state of Borno on June 22.

Bitrus said he had verified that about 63 women and girls escaped on Thursday July 3 and Friday 4.

He sent a representative to meet some of the escapees and their families at a hospital in Lassa, a town in the neighboring Damboa local government area.

Abbas Gava vigilante leader in Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, said on Sunday July 6 that vigilantes in the area told him 63 women and girls fled Boko Haram compound  on Friday while their captors were engaged in a major attack on a military barracks and police headquarters in Damboa town.

 "12 soldiers, five policemen, over 50 Boko Haram members and unspecified number of civilians were killed during the attack on Saturday morning,” said Gava.

Small-scale kidnappings by Boko Haram extremists had been going on for months before they drew international condemnation for the abductions of 300 schoolgirls from a school in Chibok town of Borno state on April 15,mos of whom are still being held prisoners

A well-publicized Twitter campaign, #bringbackourgirls, has drawn attention to the captives' plight, but "the overstretched and under-resourced military" has been unable to organize a rescue mission.

Local activists are still working to ensure the safe return of the 220 remaining prisoners and protesting against the government's slow response to the kidnappings. Members of the Bring Back Our Girls movement attempted to march on Nigeria's presidential palace on Sunday to protest, but were turned away by security forces.

"We have been coming out for 68 days and nobody has really listened to us,” activist Aisha Yesufu told reporters. She said the group “decided that we should just take the protest back to the president so that he will know that we are still out there".

The government and military failure to rescue them has attracted criticism at home and abroad.

Boko Haram is demanding the release of detained fighters in exchange for the girls which Nigeria's president Jonathan Goodluck has reportedly refused to consider a prisoner swap.

Amid the stalemate, Bitrus said that attacks have increased around Chibok and that Boko Haram has taken over some villages in the area and is threatening to take over others.

The Kibaku Area Development Association, a local residents' association of which he is also chairman, reported that 19 villages have been attacked since the April 15 abductions, with more than 229 people killed and about 100 seriously wounded.

 In 90% of cases there had been advance warning of the attacks - as happened in the Chibok kidnappings - yet the military had taken no action, the association said in a statement on Friday July 4.

"Security and defence is mainly provided by the local vigilante (who are ill-equipped) and the police while the soldiers in Chibok sit by and watch villagers being helplessly massacred in their homes, farms and in places of worship," it said in a statement.

The association called for help from the United Nations.

“The inability or unwillingness of the federal government to provide adequate security to Chibok (Kibaku) nation following the abduction of the girls leaves us with no option than to call on the United Nations to use its apparatus to come to our aid and protect us from the imminent annihilation as a people,” the statement said.

The Associated Press had originally quoted witnesses and a local official reporting that about 90 people including about 30 boys had been kidnapped from three villages on June 22. A police officer later told The Associated Press that they had conducted an investigation at the insistence of the Borno state governor and had reported that 71 women and girls were abducted, but no males. The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to give information to reporters, said that report never was published because of the official denial that any kidnapping had taken place.

Some officials also had questioned the mass abduction of the Chibok girls, which was confirmed last month by a presidential investigating committee.

More than 2,000 people have died so far this year in the 5-year-old Islamic uprising, compared to an estimated 3,600 in the four previous years.