Via France 24:

Demonstrators in the Nigerian capital of Abuja on Wednesday are to hold a “million-woman march” a day after a local leader claimed that some of the schoolgirls abducted two weeks ago had been sold as “wives” abroad.

Activists and relatives of the more than 100 girls kidnapped from their school in the remote northeastern region of Nigeria’s Borno state plan to march on the National Assembly.

Anger against the Nigerian authorities’ perceived inability to address the issue and a failed government rescue attempt has been mounting across the oil-rich West African nation in recent days.

An organisation called Women for Peace and Justice has called for a “million-woman protest march” in the capital Abuja on Wednesday to demand that more resources be committed to securing the girls’ release.

The Islamist group Boko Haram has been blamed for the mass nighttime kidnapping, one of the most shocking attacks in a country that’s no stranger to militant attacks.

Public outrage has been compounded by the conflicting information being supplied by the authorities about the attack and the victims.

On Tuesday, a local Chibok elder told the AFP that some of the girls had been taken to neighbouring Chad and Cameroon. They were then sold as brides to Islamist fighters for 2,000 naira ($12) each, said Pogo Bitrus.

In an interview with the BBC, Bitrus said the community had been tracking the girls and has learned that, “one of the ‘grooms’ brought his ‘wife’ to a neighbouring town in Cameroon and kept her there,” he said before adding, “It’s a medieval kind of slavery”.