Abducted Schoolgirls Taken Abroad For Marriage

 

The students were about to sit their final year exam and so are mostly aged between 16 and 18.
"Some of them have been taken across Lake Chad and some have been ferried across the border into parts of Cameroon," he told the BBC.

Mr Bitrus said there were also reports that the insurgents had married some of the girls.

 Mr Bitrus said 230 girls were missing since militants attacked the school in Chibok, Borno state, two weeks ago.

"We learned that one of the 'grooms' brought his 'wife' to a neighbouring town in Cameroon and kept her there," 

"It's a medieval kind of slavery," he added. 

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau first threatened to treat captured women and girls as slaves in a video released in May 2013.

It fuelled concern at the time that the group is adhering to the ancient Islamic belief that women captured during war are slaves with whom their "masters" can have sex, correspondents say.

Mr Bitrus said everyone in the community felt as though their own daughters had been abducted.
Men were "braving it out", but women were "crying and wailing", he said.

"Whether it is my niece or whoever it doesn't matter. We are all one people," Mr Bitrus said.

"That's why I'm crying now as community leader to alert the world to what's happening so that some pressure would be brought to bear on government to act and ensure the release of these girls."

The government has said the security forces are searching for the girls, but its critics say it is not doing enough.