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The extensive outrages underway in Nigeria

There seems to be no end to violence, of one dastardly kind or another, around the globe - to the extent of even being directed at children and women.    What is presently happening in Nigeria is both tragic, unconscionable and inhuman.  


  Binta Ibrahim at a refugee camp in Yola, Nigeria, on May 4 after Nigerian soldiers rescued her in the Sambisa Forest

"What in the world—or rather, what in Nigeria—is really going on?

Over a year ago, reports lamented the kidnapping of over 200 schoolgirls from Nigeria’s northern town of Chibok.

Activists created the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls to trigger global awareness and push the Nigerian army to bring the Chibok schoolgirls back.

The people of Nigeria wailed at the sheer magnitude of the abduction, and experts explained that the loss of such a huge number of citizens and the phenomenon of terrorism itself were rare for the advanced African nation.

Additionally, many assumed that the capture of the Chibok 276 schoolgirls by Boko Haram was, and would be, the largest-ever instance of terrorism run amok in the African giant, Nigeria.

That assumption was wrong, if the latest rescue reports from Nigeria are true. The damage from terrorism in Nigeria is much greater than once estimated. In the past two weeks alone, some 700 children and women have been rescued, “as soldiers supported by air raids” deployed on foot into a Boko Haram stronghold, the Sambisa Forest, according to Al-Jazeera.

In addition to these 700 women and children who were rescued last week, 293 girls were rescued the week before, Al-Jazeera noted.

In other words, there were, and could actually still be, more children and women held by Boko Haram than the initial Chibok schoolgirls (who, by the way, have not been found).

Here we all were, indignant! Angered! Incensed … by the unimaginable loss of some 276 Chibok schoolgirls last year, only to now hear of a much bigger and more sinister cancer eating away at the north.

The idea that Boko Haram had captured the Chibok girls was mind-blowing enough, but now we come to discover that what we assumed was an impossible scale of abduction is even larger.

A staggering thousands more than the 276 schoolgirls have been captured by Boko Haram; the terrorist group has seized at least 2,000 women and girls, according to Amnesty International, and some 1.5 million people have been displaced from their homes amid the attacks.

To make matters downright vicious and enraging, many of the girls who were rescued by the Nigerian army in recent weeks were “discovered to be at various stages of pregnancies, some visibly pregnant and some just tested pregnant,” a United Nations official said."

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