Million Women March

There have been a variety of responses to the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls from the dormitory of their secondary school in Chibok. There have been calls from various quarters for Nigerians to pray, to fast, to petition the government, to protest in the streets. The desperate relatives of the girls have attempted to follow their abductors deep into Sambisa forest. The first lady of Borno state, Hajiya Nana Kashim Shettima, appealed for fasting and prayer in mosques and churches, urging women to 'put our differences aside irrespective of our faith and ethnicity' and 'all join hands together to rescue these girls.' A Twitter campaign with the hashtag 'Bring Back our Girls' has been launched, and is apparently starting to trend worldwide.

But there still hasn't been any official comment or statement from the Nigerian government about what they are actually doing to hunt for the abducted girls. The situation has caused such despair that a 'Million Women March' is due to take place in Abuja tomorrow, with organisers calling for women from all over Nigeria to convene on the capital, wear red, and goad the government into action. At this point, when reports are starting to surface that the girls may already have been split up and sold off as 'brides', I can't help but think it is unlikely to make much of a difference. But the fact that the pressure on the Nigerian government is continuing - and that tomorrow's planned march made BBC headline news this evening - is a new phenomenon. It no longer feels as if these abductions and school attacks are Borno's problem alone. There is definitely a sense that Nigerians (in Abuja, at least) feel that this could have happened to any of their daughters, which is a new and potentially game-changing development. I wonder if the increased sense of vulnerability felt by residents of Abuja as a result of the Nyanya bombing has something to do with it, the growing awareness that Boko Haram is no longer confined to the states of emergency in the northeast. So it will be telling to see how many of the million women actually make it to Abuja tomorrow.