Bring Back Our Girls

The Nigerian government of President Goodluck Jonathan floundered in attempts to find the girls, 219 of whom remain missing amid varying reports they have been killed or forced into marriages arranged by the militants. Jonathan was widely criticized for not commenting on the kidnapping publicly until three weeks after it happened and for dismissing the "Bring Back Our Girls” campaign as politically motivated. "Wherever these girls are, we'll get them out," Jonathan said last May, but his government has shown little progress. Jonathan was defeated last month in a presidential election by Muhammadu Buhari, who said his government will have a new approach to finding the girls, one that beings with “honesty.” Buhari, a former military ruler of Africa’s largest nation, won election in part because he was widely seen as more capable of combating the threat from Boko Haram. Emmanuel Ogebe, a human rights lawyer and special counsel to the World Ebony Network, which has brought 10 of the escaped girls to the U.S. and placed them in schools, agreed. Ogebe said Buhari – a Muslim and a former military man who hails from Boko Haram's stronghold in the country's north – gives him the political capital to more successfully locate the missing girls.