Yesterday, an aid worker with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Hauwa Liman was killed in Nigeria by Islamist militants who kidnapped her last March.
In a swift reaction, the Bring Back Our Girls Group are presently in the Unity Fountain for Abuja, Nigeria capital to protest Hauwa’s death.
Nigeria presidential candidate Oby Ezekwesili is leading the protest in tears.
Hauwa Liman, a midwife, was killed days after kidnappers set a deadline.
The ICRC said it was devastated by the news while the Nigerian government called the murder “inhuman and ungodly”.
Ms Liman was taken with two others in the northern Nigerian town of Rann. Fellow midwife Saifura Ahmed Khorsa was killed last month.
Ms Liman, 24, a midwife and university health education student, was working with internally displaced people in Rann in Borno State, the epicentre of militant activity, when she was abducted in March 2018.
She was taken along with Ms Khorsa and Alice Loksha, a nurse, during an attack on a military base by Iswap fighters in which three other humanitarian workers and eight members of the security forces were killed.
Last month, the ICRC received a video showing the killing of Ms Khorsa.
Exactly a month later, on Monday, another video appeared showing the killing of Ms Liman. A local reporter, who said he had seen it, reported that Ms Liman was shot at close range.
The militants did not make their demands public. The excuse they gave for killing Ms Khorsa in September was that they had put forward their demands to the government but they were ignored. The government has not disclosed what the jihadists were demanding.
Nigerian Information and Culture Minister Alhaji Lai Mohammed said the government was “deeply pained” by news of the killing, but added it would “keep the negotiations open” and continue to work to free Ms Loksha and the schoolgirl.
Iswap has reportedly said it plans to keep the schoolgirl and the nurse, both Christians, as slaves.
Below are social media reactions to Hauwa’s death:
