Nigeria: As Shekau Claims Responsibility - Two Abducted Schoolgirls Die

An intermediary of Boko Haram has claimed that two of the girls abducted from Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, have died from snakebite while 20 others are critically ill, The Associated Press (AP) reports.

This shocking news has come as a blow to millions of Nigerians and people from around the world who have joined the BringBackOurGirls movement, demanding the release of the schoolgirls in good condition.

In a televised media chat on Sunday, President Goodluck Jonathan said that an encouraging bit of news so far was the fact that there had been no report of loss of lives.

However, the terrorist sect's leader, Abubakar Shekau, has released a new video claiming credit for the kidnap of the schoolgirls and threateninh to sell out the girls.

The Boko Haram kingpin further said that the sect was ready to negotiate ransoms for the girls. The man who claimed to be an intermediary also said that the Christians among the girls had been forced to convert to Islam.

President Jonathan had, during Sunday's "Presidential Media Chat" dismissed insinuations that the federal government was negotiating with Boko Haram to secure the release of the abducted schoolgirls, adding that the government could not have been negotiating with faceless people.

I kidnapped your schoolgirls, Shekau claims in new video Shekau, in a video, claimed responsibility for the abduction of more than 200 final-year students GSS, Chibok, Borno State.

In the video, the hoodlum said,"I abducted your girls. By Allah, I will sell them in the market, and Allah has commanded me to sell them in the market."

"There is a market for selling human beings. Allah says I should sell them. He commands me to sell them. I will sell women. I will sell women," he continued in local Hausa language.

However, the BBC Hausa Service points out that the Boko Haram leader did not state the number of girls abducted, nor where they were taken or are now.

Dressed in his usual combat attire and armed with AK47 rifle, Shekau who spoke in Hausa and some Arabic said the girls would be held the way their colleagues were being kept in various detention cells of the military "without any negotiations ".

He said the girls are regarded as war booties, upon whom his group has rights over and can even "sell them in market ", if they so wish.

"We would also give their hands in marriage because they are our slaves. We would marry them out at the age of nine. We would marry them out at the age of 12," he said.

"Western education is sin, it is forbidden, women must go and marry," he said.

He said the abduction of the girls was justifiable because "it is just the same way they incarcerated our members in Nigerian prisons"

One of the parents of the abducted girls, Ms Martha Yarama Ndirpaya, in her interview with the Hausa service of the (BBC) has accused the federal government of being insensitive to the plight of the girls and its slow pace of rescuing them from the heartless abductors.

In a broadcast appearance on Sunday, Jonathan promised, "Anywhere the girls are, we will surely get them out."

The president described the girls' abduction as a trying and painful time and pleaded for the cooperation of parents, guardians and local communities in the rescue efforts.