A grab made on May 5, 2014 from a video obtained by AFP shows the leader of the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau, centre, delivering a speech in which he vowed to sell hundreds of schoolgirls kidnapped in northern Nigeria three weeks ago. AFP Photo
A grab made on May 5, 2014 from a video obtained by AFP shows the leader of the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau, centre, delivering a speech in which he vowed to sell hundreds of sShow more

Boko Haram threatens to sell kidnapped girls as ‘slaves’



KANO, Nigeria // Boko Haram on Monday claimed the abduction of hundreds of schoolgirls in northern Nigeria that has triggered international outrage, threatening to sell them as “slaves”.

“I abducted your girls,” the Islamist group’s leader Abubakar Shekau said in the 57-minute video obtained by AFP, referring to the 276 students kidnapped from their boarding school in Chibok, Borno state, three weeks ago.

Fifty-three of the girls managed to escape from the militants but 223 were still being held, state police said last Friday.

Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan and his administration have been under mounting pressure to act since gunmen stormed the girls’ school on April 14, forcing them from their dormitories onto lorry and driving them into the bush.

Mr Jonathan pledged in his first public comments on the abduction on Sunday evening that the government would find the girls and return them to their families.

“This is a trying time for this country... it is painful,” he said, adding that he had sought help from foreign powers, including the United States, to help Nigeria tackle its security challenges.

In the latest video, Mr Shekau is seen dressed in combat fatigues standing in front of an armoured personnel carrier and two pickup lorries mounted with submachine guns.

Six armed men stand beside him with their faces covered.

The images are blurry at times but zoom in to Mr Shekau, who speaks in the local Hausa language and Arabic, as well as English.

For the first 14 minutes, he takes a swipe at democracy, Western education, efforts for Muslims and Christians to live in peace and rails against non-believers in Islam.

“I abducted a girl at a Western education school and you are disturbed. I said Western education should end. Western education should end. Girls, you should go and get married,” he said.

“I will repeat this: Western education should fold up. I abducted your girls.”

“I will sell them in the market, by Allah,” Mr Shekau said, claiming his group was holding the girls as “slaves”.

“I will marry off a woman at the age of 12. I will marry off a girl at the age of nine,” he said elsewhere in the video.

Unconfirmed reports from local leaders in Chibok suggested that the girls had been taken across Nigeria’s borders with Chad and Cameroon and sold as brides for as little as $12.

Boko Haram has been waging an increasingly deadly insurgency in Nigeria’s north that has claimed more than 1,500 lives this year alone.

The violence has largely been confined to three northeastern states — Borno, Yobe and Adamawa — which have been under a state of emergency since May last year.

Previous attacks have targeted government offices and military installations as well as Christian churches and schools teaching a so-called Western curriculum.

But two car bomb attacks that killed more than 90 in the same suburb of the capital Abuja in three weeks have raised fears that the Islamists are changing tactics and targets.

On Friday, the United States issued a security warning to its citizens in Nigeria to avoid two Sheraton hotels in the financial capital, Lagos, because of an unspecified threat.

Unprecedented security has been put in place for the regional meeting of the World Economic Forum, which takes place in Abuja from Wednesday to Friday.

International attention on the plight of the missing girls was initially slow but has grown quickly in recent days, in part because of a social media campaign -- #bringbackourgirls.

US Secretary of State John Kerry vowed Saturday that Washington would do “everything possible” to help Nigeria deal with Boko Haram militants and bring the children home.

* Agence France-Presse

COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
 
Started: 2020
 
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
 
Based: Dubai, UAE
 
Sector: Entertainment 
 
Number of staff: 210 
 
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
COMPANY PROFILE

Name: Qyubic
Started: October 2023
Founder: Namrata Raina
Based: Dubai
Sector: E-commerce
Current number of staff: 10
Investment stage: Pre-seed
Initial investment: Undisclosed 

COMPANY PROFILE

Name: Lamsa

Founder: Badr Ward

Launched: 2014

Employees: 60

Based: Abu Dhabi

Sector: EdTech

Funding to date: $15 million

Guns N’ Roses’s last gig before Abu Dhabi was in Hong Kong on November 21. We were there – and here’s what they played, and in what order. You were warned.

  • It’s So Easy
  • Mr Brownstone
  • Chinese Democracy
  • Welcome to the Jungle
  • Double Talkin’ Jive
  • Better
  • Estranged
  • Live and Let Die (Wings cover)
  • Slither (Velvet Revolver cover)
  • Rocket Queen
  • You Could Be Mine
  • Shadow of Your Love
  • Attitude (Misfits cover)
  • Civil War
  • Coma
  • Love Theme from The Godfather (movie cover)
  • Sweet Child O’ Mine
  • Wichita Lineman (Jimmy Webb cover)
  • Wish You Were Here (instrumental Pink Floyd cover)
  • November Rain
  • Black Hole Sun (Soundgarden cover)
  • Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (Bob Dylan cover)
  • Nightrain

Encore:

  • Patience
  • Don’t Cry
  • The Seeker (The Who cover)
  • Paradise City
Key findings
  • Over a period of seven years, a team of scientists analysed dietary data from 50,000 North American adults.
  • Eating one or two meals a day was associated with a relative decrease in BMI, compared with three meals. Snacks count as a meal. Likewise, participants who ate more than three meals a day experienced an increase in BMI: the more meals a day, the greater the increase. 
  • People who ate breakfast experienced a relative decrease in their BMI compared with “breakfast-skippers”. 
  • Those who turned the eating day on its head to make breakfast the biggest meal of the day, did even better. 
  • But scrapping dinner altogether gave the best results. The study found that the BMI of subjects who had a long overnight fast (of 18 hours or more) decreased when compared even with those who had a medium overnight fast, of between 12 and 17 hours.