Abuja, Monday. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan on Sunday ordered a stepped-up drive to free 223 schoolgirls whose abduction by suspected Islamists has ignited a global outcry, as two girls who escaped told of their dead-of-night ordeal.
Jonathan has come under mounting pressure since gunmen believed to be Boko Haram extremists stormed the girls’ boarding school on April 14, forcing them from their dormitories onto trucks and driving them into the bush.
Anger at his government’s ineffectual response has fuelled protests at home and abroad, including in New York where dozens of Nigerians staged a demonstration on Saturday demanding that more action be taken.
“The president has given very clear directives that everything must be done to ensure that these girls must be brought back to safety,” his spokesman Reuben Abati told reporters after closed-door talks on the mass abduction.
The meeting brought together for the first time all key players in the search for the missing girls, from Nigeria’s military and security service chiefs to Borno state’s governor and police chief, and the head of the girls’ school in Chibok.
Until now Jonathan had conferred only with his security chiefs.
The Nigerian government said it has set up a committee, presided over by a senior army general, to advise on a mission to secure the release of the girls who are generally between 16 and 18 years old.
Police on Friday said kidnappers were still holding 223 out of 276 girls seized from the northeastern school -- higher than previous estimates of the number being held.
A Nigerian newspaper Sunday published an interview with two of the girls who got away, who told of their abduction and “desperate” escape. (AFP)
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