#BringBackOurGirls - US Team on Ground, Why Rescue Efforts Have Not Been Successful

Ibadan Women in red scarves to campaign #bringbackourgirls

There are reports that the United States that will assist their Nigerian military and intelligence experts and now on ground in Nigeria. On Wednesday, President Barack Obama said the team comprised personnel from military, law enforcement and other agencies and said he hoped the kidnapping would galvanise the international community to take action against Boko Haram.

Video Allegedly Showing Boko Haram Killing One Of The Chibok Girls Is Untrue

The Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro has tweeted some proof that the video allegedly showing Boko Haram members killing one of the missing Chibok schoolgirls is not genuine. The video has been published on several blogs and shows a young girl buried in a sandy hole and stoned to death.

[Video] Boko Haram Claims Responsibility For Abducted Girls - Threatens to Sell Them

Nigeria's Islamic extremist leader threatened in a videotaped statement seen on Monday to sell the more than 200 teenage schoolgirls abducted from a school in the remote northeast of the country three weeks ago.

#BringbackourGirls - Masses Turn Out For Protests, Boko Haram Negotiator Emerges

Hundreds of Nigerians protested in Abuja, Ibadan, Kaduna, Lagos and Kano over the schoolgirls abducted from Government Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, more than two weeks ago. The protesters in Abuja demanded at the National Assembly that the federal government provide concrete news in 24 hours concerning the fate of the girls or the protests would continue.

#BringBackOurGirls Abducted Girls Reportedly Married Off For N2000 Each As Rally Holds in Abuja

@blcompere ready for the Abuja protest

Over 200 female students aged between 16 and 18 were abducted by Boko Haram over two weeks ago, and except for the handful that escaped, most of the girls are still captive. Today, there was a protest rally in Abuja to raise awareness about the missing girls that started at 3pm and will go on till 8pm at the Unity Fountain.

#BringbacktheGirls - Other Boko Haram Victims Narrate Ordeal as Sex Slaves

It is going to two weeks, and almost 200 School girls are still missing after two hundred and thirty four of them were abducted from their dormitories. Parents who had in all good conscience sent those young girls to go back to school and complete their senior school certificate exams are now going out of their mind.

Between Boston and Boko Haram

I live in America, I am Nigerian. Chimamanda called it this thing around an immigrant/emigrant's neck, and it manifests in different ways. This blog has a focus on relationships, but I also try to keep updated on politics and current affairs, and I report some of them here. I wrote a several pieces on the Boston bombings here, it was scary, it was closer to home, and the news was full with it.

A few days later, I heard of the over hundred people killed north of Maiduguri and followed as the government and JTF bandied words like over-exaggerated around about the number of people the red cross and eye witnesses reported dead. But there was just a couple of articles on the Nigerian newspaper apps I have on my phone, and by the next day, other news has taken the front page. I also moved on.

This article on the Daily Beast got me thinking, though it is directed at American, I think maybe we Nigerians, and can I say those living in the country especially, have a lot to ponder on. Are Nigerians second class citizens in their own country where local papers give more column inches to American news than to home grown incidents? Food for thought.

Pity Boston, Ignore Nigeria: The Limits of Compassion by Janine di Giovanni

No one would ever argue that the bombing in Boston was not horrific. But there was something uncomfortable in the obsessive global news coverage, of the bottleneck of journalists flying into Logan Airport struggling to find the smallest remnant of some new detail to report. Was it the suggestion, subtly transmitted, that America is the center of the universe?

The Nigerian State: 'Violence has been deregulated'

Who remembers the prediction of Nigeria's breakup come 2015? An op-ed piece in the Daily Times of Nigeria does, and the writer, El-Nathan John is angry. He is originally from Kaduna State in Northern Nigeria and is angry about the quasi-religious violence going on in his hometown. I don't know that we should only get mad when our states and communities are affected, but his piece is germane to the on-going debate about the state of Nigeria.