DEVELOPMENTS
— First lady Michelle Obama criticized the kidnapping of the Nigerian schoolgirls as an “unconscionable act” carried out by a terrorist group she said is determined to keep them from getting an education — “or grown men attempting to snuff out the aspirations of young girls.”
— Islamic extremists blew up a bridge, killed an unknown number of people and abducted the wife and two children of a retired police officer in northeast Nigeria, residents said.
— A team of French experts arrived in Nigeria to help look for the girls, said an official in President Francois Hollande’s office in Paris. British security experts arrived Friday to join Nigerian and American forces.
Associated Press
The president of Nigeria for weeks refused international help to search for more than 300 girls abducted from a school by Islamic extremists, one in a series of missteps that have led to growing international outrage against the government.
The United Kingdom, Nigeria’s former colonizer, first said it was ready to help in a news release the day after the mass abduction on April 15, and made a formal offer of assistance on April 18, according to the British Foreign Office. And the U.S. has said its embassy and staff agencies offered help and were in touch with Nigeria “from day one” of the crisis, according to Secretary of State John Kerry.
Yet it was only on Tuesday and Wednesday, almost a month later, that President Goodluck Jonathan accepted help from the United States, Britain, France and China.
The delay underlines what has been a major problem in the attempt to find the girls: an apparent lack of urgency on the part of the government and military, for reasons that include a reluctance to bring in outsiders as well as possible infiltration by the extremists.
Jonathan bristled last week when he said U.S. President Barack Obama, in a telephone conversation about aid, had brought up alleged human rights abuses by Nigerian security forces. Jonathan also acknowledged that his government might be penetrated by insurgents from Boko Haram, the extremist group that kidnapped the girls.
Last year, he said he suspected Boko Haram terrorists might be in the executive, legislative and judiciary arms of government along with the police and armed forces.
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The waiting has left parents in agony, especially since they fear some of their daughters have been forced into marriage with their abductors for a nominal bride price of $12. Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau called the girls slaves in a video this week and vowed to sell them.
“For a good 11 days, our daughters were sitting in one place,” said Enoch Mark, the anguished father of two girls abducted from the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School. “They camped them near Chibok, not more than 30 kilometers, and no help in hand. For a good 11 days.”
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The military has denied that it ignored warnings of the impending attacks. Maj. Gen. Chris Olukolade, a Defense Ministry spokesman, said the major challenge has been that some of the information given turned out to be misleading.
Reuben Abati, one of Jonathan’s presidential advisers, denied that Nigeria had turned down offers of help.
“That information cannot be correct,” he said. “What John Kerry said is that this is the first time Nigeria is seeking assistance on the issue of the abducted girls.”
In fact, Kerry has said Nigeria did not welcome U.S. help earlier because it wanted to pursue its own strategy.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said Friday that it took “far too long” for Jonathan to accept U.S. offers of aid, and he is holding a hearing next week to examine what happened. A senior State Department official also said Friday that the U.S. offered help “back in April, more or less right away.”
“We didn’t go public about it because the consensus was that doing so would make the Nigerians less likely to accept our help,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue concerns internal discussions between governments.
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Nigeria is a country of 170 million in West Africa that receives hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid from the U.S. every year to address a rising insurgency in the north and growing tensions between Christians and Muslims. The northeast, where the girls were kidnapped, is remote and sparsely populated, far from the southern oil fields that help to power Africa’s biggest economy.
The abductions came hours after a massive explosion in the Nigerian capital of Abuja killed at least 75 people, just a 15-minute drive away from Jonathan’s residence and office. Chibok government official Bana Lawal said that at about 11 p.m. on April 15, he received a warning via cell phone that about 200 heavily armed militants were on their way to the town.
Lawal alerted the 15 soldiers guarding Chibok, who sent an SOS to the nearest barracks about 30 miles away, an hour’s drive on a dirt road. But help never came. The military says its reinforcements ran into an ambush.
The soldiers in Chibok fought valiantly but were outmanned and outgunned by the extremists. They then made their way to the Chibok girls school, where they captured dozens of girls. Police say 53 escaped on their own and 276 remain captive.
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