#BringBackOurGirls: Over 1m tweet for schoolgirls' freedom

The #BringBackOurGirls hashtag has been tweeted over 1 million times since it was first used two weeks ago calling for the release for over 200 girls kidnapped in Nigeria.

US First Lady Michelle Obama is the latest high profile Twitter user to tweet her support for the abducted school girls.

She posted her photo yesterday accompanied by the words: “Our prayers are with the missing Nigerian girls and their families.

It’s time to #BringBackOurGirls.”

Meanwhile, Hollywood actors including Ashton Kutcher, Justin Timberlake, Sean Penn, and Bradley Cooper have coined a parallel hashtag reminding fans that #RealMenDontBuyGirls.

More than 200 girls were abducted from a boarding school in the Chibok province of northeast Nigeria on April 15th, over three weeks ago, by the Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

The group has also claimed responsibility for the abduction of another eight girls, aged 12 to 15, in recent days.

Boko Haram opposes the "western education" of Nigeria's young people, in particular girls. It has threatened to sell the abducted girls as "brides" - ie into the global sex-trafficking industry. A video released this week shows Boko Haram's leader, Abubakar Shekau, declaring that the girls will be made into sex slaves.

Police said yesterday that at least 125 people were killed in the latest large-scale attack after gunmen rampaged through a town in the northeast.

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who survived a shooting by Taliban insurgents, has said the world must not stay silent over the schoolgirl abduction. She told the BBC that “if we remain silent then this will spread. This will happen more and more and more.”

She described the Nigerian girls as her “sisters” who are “in a prison” and says the only way to prevent similar abductions is to speak out.

In Dublin, about 30 members of the Nigerian Diaspora in Ireland, some of who have family members affected by schoolgirl abduction, protested loudly outside their country's embassy in Dublin yesterday morning.

They called on Nigeria’s president Goodluck Jonathan to accept assistance from the US and Britain in finding the girls.

US president Barack Obama said yesterday that the kidnapping of Nigerian girls and sectarian conflicts worldwide are a sign that "we have not extinguished man's darkest impulses".

Mr Obama’s administration has announced plans to establish a “co-ordination cell” of experts in Nigeria to bolster efforts to find the girls.

The degree of US assistance is still being defined but the Pentagon said the cell at the US embassy in Abuja would include fewer than 10 military personnel.

France also said it was boosting intelligence ties with Nigeria and sending security service agents to tackle Boko Haram.

The abduction of the schoolgirls and numerous other attacks by Boko Haram have overshadowed the World Economic Forum which opened in the Nigerian city of Abuja yesterday.

Nigerian officials had hoped the event would draw attention to the potential of Africa’s biggest economy as an investment destination.

Additional reporting from agencies