#Bring Back Our Girls: Why the World Is Finally Talking About Nigeria's Kidnapped Students

The girls were relaxing in their dorms at the Government Girls Secondary School in the northern Nigerian town of Chibok when gunmen arrived in trucks, cars and on motorcycles.
There were dozens of them — suspected jihadis with the Boko Haram Islamic group — and they were heavily armed. After shooting the guards, and setting fire to houses, the terrorists kidnapped nearly 300 of the girls and drove off into the woods.
That was on April 15. The girls haven't been heard from since.

And the media, for the most part, has remained largely silent. Coverage of the missing girls has been dwarfed by the other major stories of late — the South Korean ferry, the racist NBA owner and the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.
"Maybe if the more than 200 Nigerian girls abducted from their school weeks ago were on a ferry in Korea, a jet liner in the Indian Ocean, in the owner's box at a Clippers basketball game, or were white, the world would pay more attention," Boing Boing blogger Xeni Jardin said, echoing the thoughts of many.
"If it had happened anywhere else, this would be the world's biggest story," said CNN's Frida Ghitis.
But now, three weeks later, a hashtag associated with their disappearance has been tweeted nearly 1 million times.
There is a petition calling on the Nigerian government and all enabled international parties to rescue them, and more than 250,000 people have signed it. There are tumblr blogs, Facebook pages, and — finally, some would say — mainstream media coverage.
But getting to this point was no mere accident. It was the direct result of a semi-coordinated campaign to make world leaders, the media — and you — aware of the plight of Nigeria's missing girls.

By: Christian Pascal Ukegbu