Families commemorate 500-day anniversary of Chibok girls’ kidnapping

The families of the nearly 300 girls that were abducted from Chibok, Nigeria, last year along with the #BringBackOurGirls group plan to hold a march and candle-lit vigil on Thursday to commemorate 500 days since they were taken.
In a statement this week #BringBackOurGirls conveners, Oby Ezekwesili and Hadiza Bala Usman, said the march would be a reminder of the missing Chibok girls.

“Since 498 days that they have been missing… we failed them and they were taken and the best thing is for us to have rescued them that very day. And up until now, 498 days after, we still haven’t done that,” added the group’s spokesperson Aisha Yesufu.
The Government Secondary School where the girls attended was stormed by Boko Haram fighters on 14 April 2014. Militants abducted 276 girls who were preparing for final exams.

Fifty-seven of the girls managed to escape the assailants, but the remaining 219 girls have not been heard of since May when they appeared in a video wearing Muslim attire and reciting the Koran.
In the video Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, said the girls have been converted to Islam and “married off”.
Meanwhile, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the organisation would work with Nigeria “to address and counter extremism and terrorism.”
Ban met with Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari this week to discuss “the cause of troubling levels of violence and terror perpetuated by Boko Haram in north-eastern Nigeria and beyond.”