Boko Haram: Shekau Vows To Sell, Marry Off Abducted Girls In New Video

Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau has helped the federal government locate the abducted schoolgirls, hours after President Jonathan said the government did not know wherea the girls are being held. In a video released yesterday, he said, “I abducted your girls and I will sell them in the market”.

The video raised fears the girls might have been sold to Islamist fighters across the boarder, as hinted by a leader in Chibok where the girls were kidnapped.

The video by Boko Haram’s leader admitting responsibility for the abduction immediately elicited response from the Defence Headquarters which said it was taking the video seriously.

Shekau was seen dressed in combat fatigues in the latest video. He stood in front of an armoured personnel carrier and two pick-up trucks mounted with sub-machine guns. Six armed men stood beside him with their faces covered.

The images of the video obtained by AFP are blurry at times but zoom in to Shekau, who spoke in Hausa, Arabic, as well as English.

For the first 14 minutes of the 57 minutes video, 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,” 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.

Some leaders in Chibok had earlier quoted their “impeccable source” as saying the girls had been taken across Nigeria’s borders with Chad and Cameroon and sold as brides for as little as $12.

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 which has trended globally.