It has been over two weeks since Boko Haram rebels kidnapped 240 teenage girls from their school as they prepared to sit for their final exams. The Nigerian military initially lied about having rescued the girls losing precious time in their rescue efforts and once their lies had been exposed, they have had had limited engagement in rescue operations. One father of a kidnapped student offered this explanation for the government’s lack of a response “We are poor with no influence whatsoever, which we believe is the reason the government does not care about our girls”
The families of the kidnapped have been pooling together their own monies to hire locals to venture into the forest where the Boko Haram maybe holding the girls—but without expertise and equipment, these locals have risked their own lives and have not been effective.
As an international community we cannot sit idly by when such a bold and hateful crime occurs to young girls-no matter where they live. We all depend on Nigerian oil and U.S. and British oil firms extract over $50 billion dollars in revenue from this nation. We are tied to Nigeria and it’s people, so we call on U.S. leadership in the region to commit to finding these young women now!
We call on members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and it’s Subcommittee for African Affairs to direct the State Department to:
• Urge the Nigerian military and President Goodluck Jonathan to allow direct assistance from interested nations (including the United States)and private organizations to track down and rescue the 184 remaining kidnapped girls from Borno state.
• Assign a top level U.S. military officer to help coordinate and manage resources and equipment and provide oversight for the rescue operation including providing direct assistance to the families of the girls as they work with local communities to gather intelligence as to whereabouts of the girls.
