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Nigeria is hosting the World Economic Forum next week, and while the country’s chairmanship was intended as a moment to celebrate its growing economic power, a major bomb blast in the capital and the kidnapping of more than 200 girls has shifted attention to the worsening security situation in the African nation.
On April 14, an explosion at a bus station on the outskirts of Abuja killed at least 75 people and wounded hundreds more. The massive blast hit at rush hour, immersing the depot into a stench of burning fuel and flesh, according to the Associated Press.
That same day, gunmen entered a secondary school in the country’s northern Borno state. They kidnapped more than 200 female students who were completing their final exams, driving them off to the remote Sambisa forest. While some managed to escape, about 180 are still missing. According to villagers in the forest, some of them have been moved to neighboring Chad and Cameroon and are being forced to marry their Islamic extremist abductors.
Both attacks are the work of militants of Boko Haram, a group of Islamist extremists that has its base in northern Nigeria. Both attacks set the spotlight on the militants’ brutal tactics and the ineffective response of the government under President Goodluck Jonathan.
