Bring Our Daughters Home

My name is Confidence Omenai. I am a poet activist and mother of four. I spent the earliest years of my childhood in Nigeria where my father, siblings and half my family still reside.
On April 14, a group of militants calling themselves Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 Nigerian school girls ages 15-18 from the Government Secondary School in Chibok, located in Borno State. The group’s name directly translates as "Western education is sin." These girls have been missing for two weeks now with gruesome reports of them being married off in mass weddings. Their families are weary with grief over the rumors that their daughters were sold as brides for the nominal price of 2,000 naira, the equivalent of $12 in the United States. If 200 American girls were abducted, there would be round-the-clock coverage on every network.
I cannot, as a mother and a woman with Nigerian blood in her veins, stand back idly and wait for the world at large to care. I am asking you to feel the pain and desperation of these women and children. Join me in urging President Obama to lend U.S. support toward returning their daughters to their homes. The mass weddings belie the horror these girls are enduring.
These mothers want what so many of us want: an education and a better life for their children. We cannot let darkness overtake them. We cannot stand for this kind of wanton brutality. I am asking women, men, mothers and fathers around the globe that believe all our daughters have a right to an education to please stand with me as I stand for them. I will not rest. I will not stop fighting. I will not give up until we bring every single one of them home. We have the power to move mountains. Consider if this was your daughter. Human trafficking is real and we must fight it on every shore. As long as they are captive none of us is free.