Rebels expose impotence of Nigeria’s armed forces

NIGERIAN Islamist militant group Boko Haram is still holding 85 girls it abducted from a raid on a high school in northeastern Borno state, although 44 others had been freed, the state government said yesterday.

Monday’s abduction of schoolgirls aged 15 to 18 by Boko Haram, which is fighting for a breakaway Islamic state in northern Nigeria, shocked the country.

It also underscored just how powerless Nigeria’s military is at protecting civilians despite a year-long state of emergency meant to flush the rebels out of three states in the northeast.

The Islamists attacked Chibok school, in remote Borno state, on Monday.

Most of the 129 girls staying at the school were abducted, although the precise numbers were not clear.

Borno education commission-

We continually pray that all our students return in good health

er Inuwa Kubo said in a statement late on Friday that 16 students had fled back home during the night of the attack, and another 28 had escaped. The other 85 girls were still missing.

“We continually pray that all our students return in good health,” Kubo said.

The armed forces said on Wednesday that the military had freed all but eight of the schoolgirls in a rescue operation, but it retracted that statement a day later.

Boko Haram’s five-year-old struggle is now seen as the main security threat to Africa’s leading energy producer.

Kidnapping girls is a tactic Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is forbidden”, began using early last year.

It is reminiscent of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army, which abducted thousands of teenagers across central Africa to become “wives” for its commanders.

The kidnapping occurred the same day 75 people were killed in a bomb blast, also blamed on Boko Haram, on the edge of the capital Abuja —