If 234 schoolgirls were kidnapped in Britain today, it’s a reasonable assumption that it would dominate the news agenda for days, if not weeks. Headlines would scream from front pages, outrage would pour from the commentators, a Cobra meeting would be hastily convened and David Cameron’s face would appear on our screens far more often than, in normal circumstances, anyone would really wish for.

Yet that very same abduction, except in northern Nigeria, apparently at the hands of Islamist fighters, has made only the briefest of flitters across the international media radar. That is in part due to a lack of access: the raid having occurred in a remote, virtually lawless north-eastern area where militants hold sway and where the military, let alone the press, rarely dare venture.

There is also an element of a too familiar double standard, one that in some ways is understandable because the news by nature, as it was once explained to me by a veteran journalist, is the reporting of what is new. That is to say, such an event would be a major departure from the norm on our shores, but in the grim litany of almost weekly bomb attacks and killings that have come to characterise Nigeria’s five-year Islamist uprising, which has claimed an estimated 1,500 lives this year alone, it is, tragically, not quite as extraordinary. On April 14, the same day the girls were abducted, 88 people were killed in twin bomb attack at a bus station in the capital Abuja, a much more visible event which at least for a while, diverted the world’s attention from the schoolgirls’ plight.

The group suspected to be behind the kidnapping, Boko Haram – which translates as “Western education is forbidden” – has shown a brutal adherence to its name with the regular targeting of schools in its bid to create an Islamic state in the country’s north. Last July it burned 29 pupils alive in their classroom, and in February massacred 59 schoolboys before tearing their boarding school to the ground. With each fresh attack, the public becomes increasingly numbed to the violence, the bar for what shocks us rises higher, and the militants grow bolder.

Nevertheless, the magnitude of this latest assault has appalled even those most hardened of Nigerian observers, resulting in an outpouring of frustration at the Nigeria government’s apparent inaction.

“We are poor with no influence whatsoever, which we believe is the reason the government does not care about our girls,” the father of one of the missing told Agence France Presse as hundreds of protesters marched on the Nigerian parliament on Wednesday to demand the government scale up its response.

Admittedly, hostage crises are a delicate business of the highest stakes and there may be more going on behind the scenes than we know. But that Nigeria’s first lady herself threw her weight behind Wednesday’s march – reportedly telephoning its organiser, the first lady of Borno state, personally to offer her support – is rather telling.

From the outside, the official response to the case appears to have been weak, to say the least. Right from the outset, the authorities have downplayed the scale of the abduction in a manner that is understandably interpreted as a failure to treat it with the seriousness it deserves.

They dispute the numbers of hostages, claiming that just over 100 girls have been taken (so that’s alright then) – around half the tally of 234 reported by the school and the parents themselves, whom you might imagine are in the best position to know.

And the day after the abduction, the Nigerian military erroneously claimed it had rescued almost all the girls only to backtrack 24 hours later and admit that it had not actually rescued any at all. Since then, the case seems to have slipped into an information vacuum, leaving many casting doubt on what, if anything, is being done to rescue them.

As one Twitter user, @toluogunlesi, wrote under the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls: “The tragedy is that the question is not: ‘Will they find them?’ but instead ‘Are they looking for them?’

The parents themselves however, are looking for them, having made attempts to approach known Boko Haram camps in the remote Sambisa Forest, where sightings have suggested the girls are being held, before being warned off by locals. Now, amid reports from villagers in that the girls are being trafficked to neighbouring countries and being sold off as “brides” to Islamist fighters for 2,000 naira (£7.50), there are mounting calls for the Nigerian government to negotiate their release.

That, if it involves paying a ransom, might be unwise. The principle of non-negotiation is a difficult one to swallow but is designed to prevent further harm: if Boko Haram, or whichever group is responsible, realises they can get far more than 2,000 naira for their female hostages, more women will almost certainly fall prey to their growing ambitions.

The request, in itself, cannot be faulted – no parent in their right mind would sacrifice their child for a principle, and if my daughter had been dragged into a forest camp by an Islamist fighter I would be banging on President Goodluck Jonathan’s door demanding he empty every single pocket in the treasury to secure her release.

As such desperation grows – so does the risk of independent actions by parents or local vigilantes risking potential further tragedy. The authorities need to show clearly what steps they are taking, if only to the families themselves.

“Can anyone hear me?” read one placard at Wednesday’s march. The Nigerian government now needs to answer – and we must be listening intently when it does.

•Source: Telegraph Online.

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