Why All Christians Need to Care and Act Until Every One of the Kidnapped Nigerian Girls Are Safely Back With Their Families

Women react during a protest on April, 30, 2014, outside Nigeria’s Parliament in Abuja demanding that security forces search harder for 200 school girls abducted by Islamist militants two weeks ago. (PHOTO: AFOLABI SOTUNDE / REUTERS)

$12.50. This reportedly is the current “market” price for Nigerian girl brides in some areas of Cameroon and Chad.

Two-hundred and thirty Nigerian girls, mostly Christians ages 16-20, were kidnapped from a boarding school in the northeastern village of Chobok by members of the Muslim terrorist group Boko Haram on the night of April 21. Approximately 200 girls are still missing.

The parents have taken to the streets and pleaded for help from the government to rescue the girls. But the government seems powerless to make a concerted rescue attempt.

It probably is too little and too late. Some of the girls could have already been married to Muslim men and forced to convert to Islam. If the past kidnappings of Nigerian girls are any indication, some are now sexual slaves for Boko Haram members, while also making their meals and doing their dirty work.

A worker with Open Doors International, which partners with churches in northern Nigeria, states: “The abducted girls will most probably be responsible for cooking and cleaning for the insurgents. But there is every possibility that these children could be forcefully converted to Islam and married off to members of the group or other Muslim men.”

To sum up a recent report from Nigeria’s Political Violence Research Network entitled “Our Bodies, Their Battleground,” — Christian women and girls are targeted in specific ways by the Bok Haram because they are simply visible and more vulnerable – ostensibly more of a threat and ultimately a more efficient means of incapacitating the Christian community. And forging a path to make Nigeria an Islamic country governed by Sharia Law. Boko Haram, in the local Hausa language, means “Western education is sin.”

Kidnapping is only one means to accomplish the goals of Boko Haram. In February terrorists killed around 30 boys who were sleeping in a school dormitory in the northern state of Yobe. Last month a bus bombing took 75 lives in the capital of Abuja. Another car bomb went off in Abuja Thursday night, leaving at least 20 dead and 66 injured.

The Associated Press reports approximately 1,500 Nigerians, including Christians and Muslims, were killed in the first quarter of this year.

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SOURCE: The Christian Post
(Dr. David Curry is president and CEO of Open Doors USA. Open Doors is a ministry to persecuted Christians around the world. It will celebrate its 60th anniversary in 2015.)