International
Pius Utomi Ekpei / AFP / Getty Images
On the first anniversary of the kidnapping of hundreds of girls from a school in northeast Nigeria, President-elect Muhammadu Buhari said Tuesday that he cannot promise to find the 219 who are still missing.
“We do not know if the Chibok girls can be rescued. Their whereabouts remain unknown,” Buhari said in a statement. “As much as I wish to, I cannot promise that we can find them.”
The statement by Buhari, a former military ruler of Nigeria who was democratically elected on March 28, is a marked departure from President Goodluck Jonathan, who, after his administration initially denied there had been a kidnapping, vowed to rescue them.
But a year after the April 14-15 mass abduction by Boko Haram rebels at a school in Chibok, a town in northeast Nigeria, hope has dwindled. Activists are marking the anniversary with a change in their slogan from “Bring Back Our Girls — Now and Alive” to “Never to be Forgotten.”
“We hear the anguish of our citizens and intend to respond accordingly,” Buhari's statement said. “This new approach must also begin with honesty.”
Several dozen girls managed to escape as the kidnappers were taking the hostages to the Sambisa Forest in northeast Nigeria, but 219 remain missing. They may have been split up and some eyewitnesses said some were taken across the border into Cameroon.
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has said the girls had converted to Islam and were married off to his fighters.
Their kidnapping sparked international outrage around the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. In New York City, activists said the Empire State Building will be lit up Tuesday night, over the hours the girls were snatched, in purple and red, symbolizing the movement's call for an end to violence against women and girls.
At least 2,000 women and girls have been abducted by Boko Haram since the start of 2014, and many have been forced into sexual slavery and trained to fight, Amnesty International says.
Hundreds of boys and young men also have been kidnapped and forced to fight with the group, or slaughtered for refusing to do so, it said.
The Associated Press
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