By E. Patrick Neer | Echo
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and U.S. President Barack Obama have joined forces to find and rescue the 276 girls abducted by Nigerian terrorist organization Boko Haram on Wednesday, Time reported.
Obama assured the public the United States would do everything it could to provide assistance to Nigeria in this endeavor.
"In the short term, our goal obviously is to help the international community and the Nigerian government as a team to do everything we can to recover these young ladies, but we are also going to deal with broader problem of organizations like these that can cause such havoc in people's daily lives," Obama said.
Obama's plan is to send a team of military personnel, law enforcement and other agencies to assist the Nigerian law enforcement in its search for the abducted girls.
The girls were abducted on April 14 from an all-girls secondary school in Chibok, a village in northeast Nigeria. Boko Haram, the Hausa language name for the terrorist organization The Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad, claimed responsibility for the abductions on Monday, according to Al-Jazeera.
"I abducted your girls; I will sell them in the market," said Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video obtained by the Agence France-Presse news agency.
The abductors gathered the schoolgirls, packed them into trucks and vanished into an unpoliced area along the northern border with Cameroon, according to Al-Jazeera. The brazen kidnappings have been seen as an embarrassment for the Nigerian government, sparking protests in the capital that criticized the government's response.
The Nigerian government hasn't helped its image either, with Goodluck Jonathan admitting on national television earlier this week his complete ignorance of the location of the kidnapped girls. In addition, police arrested protest leaders Saratu Angus Ndirpaya and Naomi Mutah Nyadar on Monday. Ndirpaya was released at the police station almost immediately, but Nyadar remains in detention, Al-Jazeera reported. The Nigerian First Lady has received the brunt of the responsibility for these arrests, having been quoted in the Nigeria-based Daily Trust as ordering the women of Nigeria to cease protests.
"Should anything happen during protests, they should blame themselves," Patience Jonathan said.
Boko Haram's influence seeps beyond the kidnappings. On April 14, the day of the abductions, Boko Haram agents detonated a bomb in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, killing 75. A week later, another bomb was detonated at almost the exact same place, killing 16 more. Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau released videos claiming responsibility for these bombings as well.
"We're in your city, but you don't know where we are." Shekau said.
On Thursday, in the face of protests in the capital and mounting worldwide attention, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan spoke at the now-overshadowed World Economic Forum in Abuja, pledging to win the war on terror and defeat Boko Haram.
"As a nation, we are facing attacks from terrorists. I believe that the kidnapping of these girls will be the beginning of the end of terror in Nigeria," Jonathan said.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry echoed Jonathan's sentiments and pledged U.S. support in a speech given Saturday in Ethiopia.
"The kidnapping of hundreds of children by Boko Haram is an unconscionable crime, and we will do everything possible to support the Nigerian government to return these young women to their homes and to hold the perpetrators to justice," Kerry said.
