Nigerian girls

16 days have passed since hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls were kidnapped at gunpoint by militants who oppose western education for girls.

The militants of the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram arrived at the boarding school in the dead of night. They exchanged gunfire with armed security guards outside the school before storming the school and rounding up the girls.

The frightened schoolgirls were herded onto waiting buses and motor scooters by the gunmen who assured them, “Don’t worry. Nothing will happen to you.”

18-year-old Deborah Sanya was one of the 43 lucky ones who managed to escape from the militants’ base camp.

She said she and the other girls believed they were in safe hands, until the men started shooting guns and shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great” in Islam). That was when she knew the men had lied.

According to an article in the New Yorker magazine, the families of the 234 missing girls are wallowing in the midst of uncertainty. They complain that the government is refusing to update them on the efforts to find the girls.

Even more disturbing is a Washington Post report that the girls are being sold into arranged marriages, though the report hasn’t been verified.

In a similar incident involving the Boko Haram in November, dozens of Christian women were kidnapped and forced into domestic servitude. The women were eventually rescued by the military deep in the jungles.

But as CNN.com notes, “at the time of their rescue, some were pregnant or had children, and others had been forcibly converted to Islam and married off to their kidnappers.”

Meanwhile, President Obama spoke on the ongoing controversy surrounding racial comments made in private by LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling.

So far, Obama has not mentioned the 234 missing Nigerian schoolgirls. Neither has multimillionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey, who once built a school for girls in South Africa. Oprah is all over the news these days for allegedly expressing an interest in buying the Clippers team.

Imagine the media exposure the Nigerian schoolgirl kidnapping story would receive worldwide if Obama and Oprah cared about the missing girls as much as they do about pampered pro basketball players?