Kidnap video gives hope for girls

As Nigerian Churches continued to pray for the release of the more than 200 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in mid-April, the Islamists’ group leader released a new video in which he offered to release the girls in exchange for the prisoners captured by the country’s security agencies.

Church leaders in Maiduguri said this was a sign of hope in the crisis that has attracted global sympathy, outrage and condemnation. They cautioned, however, that the terrorists were very unpredictable.

In the video, about 130 girls are seen wearing veils and chanting Islamic prayers. Abubakar Shekau, the Boko Haram leader, claimed the Christian children had converted to Islam.

“Our concern is the prisoner exchange promise could be double-edged, but we remain hopeful,” Fr John Bakeni, the secretary of the Maiduguri Diocese where the girls were kidnapped, told The Tablet on 13 May. “But our hope is strengthened by the fact that the international community has come to support us.” Britain, the United States, France and China are helping search for the students.

The girls aged between 12 and 18, the majority of them Christians, were kidnapped from a government school in Chibok town in Borno state in Muslim-majority north-eastern Nigeria. They were preparing to sit for their final examination.

Cardinal John Onaiyekan, the Archbishop of Abuja, has since expressed frustration with the way the Nigerian Government is dealing with the crisis. “We want concrete action to free the kidnapped girls,” the Catholic News Agency quoted Cardinal Onaiyekan as saying. “It is still more baffling that our president [Goodluck Jonathan] seems impotent.”

Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto, northern Nigeria, denied that the Islamist terrorists are on a religious crusade. Speaking last weekend, Bishop Kukah said Boko Haram “is not about religion and despite their dubious claims to be trying to bring about an Islamic state, the footprints have shown clearly that they are nothing but an evil species, the worst dregs of humanity who want to do nothing else but destroy our country and our people”.