By Justin King From Digital Journal

Lagos – The search for the schoolgirls kidnapped by the Boko Haram continues in the remote and rugged terrain controlled by the insurgent group. Some family members have armed themselves and joined the search, but most fight with the weapons of prayer and fasts.

The girls have been missing since last Monday when an Islamic Jihadist group known as the Boko Haram forced its way into the school after killing a police officer and at least one soldier. The girls were loaded on to trucks and taken deep into the Nigerian countryside. In the absence of satellite imaging, the Nigerian military has been attempting to track the convoy by using the tire marks on the dirt roads.

Estimates on the number of girls kidnapped range from 84 to 234. The girls were taken from a secondary school, making them somewhere between 12 and 18 years old. Estimates are difficult, and the Nigerian government has come under fire for its claim that most of the girls had been rescued, when families and principals state otherwise.

Clement Nwankwo of the Policy and Legal Advocacy Center in Abuja said

The skepticism in the public mind is increasing, perhaps even about the government’s culpability with the security concerns that Nigerians have.

A woman from Chibok, the town where the kidnapping occurred, said

They took away my daughter. I don’t know what to do. They should not allow our daughters’ dreams to be shattered by these murderers.

Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno gave an impassioned address, stating

I have seen many innocent lives lost for no reason and I mourn every life lost with empathy and high sense of responsibility. But the last one week have been my worst days as a governor and even the worst in my life.

I am troubled as a father, as a leader, and as a politician

First, as a father, any time my young daughter comes around me in the last one week at the Government House, my heart beats very fast, my heart becomes so heavy and I develop serious headache. Because when I look into the eyes of my young daughter, I wonder what the parents of the girls are feeling.

Their loving daughters are either in the hands of abductors in fear and desperation for freedom or wandering somewhere looking for safety while parents do not know the status of their children.

The Christian Association of Nigeria declared three days of fasting and prayer in hopes of bringing about the release of the girls.

The Boko Haram is a group opposed to western education of any kind in Nigeria and has waged a bloody five-year insurgency against the government. The Boko Haram claims ties to Al Queda. Many are hoping that the $7 million reward issued by the United States Bureau of Diplomatic Security for information about Abubakar Shekau, the group’s leader, will entice better trained soldiers from foreign militaries to join the search.

For more on this story go to: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/84-christian-schoolgirls-kidnapped-by-jihadists-still-missing/article/381769#ixzz2ziT6LHBg