A UNIVERSITY of Derby lecturer believes the fate of more than 200 young girls who were abducted in northern Nigeria by a terrorist group is getting more worrying by the day.
Boko Haram, an Islamist militant group, has claimed responsibility for the April 15 abductions and has now outlined its intention to sell the girls, in a harrowing video.
The girls were taken from a school in the northern state of Borno. Their whereabouts remain unknown, and there is mounting anger and frustration in Nigeria at the failure of its government to find them.
Dr Frank Faulkner, senior lecturer in Sociology at the University of Derby, said: "By releasing a video threatening to sell these girls, Boko Haram is showing clear contempt for the Nigerian government and the entire world.
"But there is clearly some form of inertia setting in here and the Nigerian government is not doing enough to find these girls in what seems like quite a piecemeal attitude towards finding a solution.
"The striking thing about Boko Haram is that it has been around for quite some time and it is causing all sorts of problems in northern Nigeria, where there is a larger Muslim population.
"There is a more Christian population in the south of the country and I believe this to be part of an expansionist agenda by the terrorist group.
"This is a very extreme, retrograde group which does not permit any form of western education, and believes people can learn all they need from the Qur'an and Allah."
