"I am pained that my other colleagues could not summon the courage to run away with me," Lawan said. "I cry each time I come across their parents and see how they weep when they see me."
Police said 53 students had escaped.
The Boko Haram terrorist network is threatening to sell into slavery those who remain captive and there have been reports that some of the girls have been forced into marriage with their abductors. Others are said to have been carried into Cameroon and Chad. Lawan said other girls who escaped later told her that the abductors spoke of their plans to marry them.
She said the thought of going back to school terrifies her, but that it will be necessary if she is to realise her dream of studying law. "I am really scared to go back; but I have no option if I am asked to go because I need to finish my final year exams," she said.
In churches across the country Nigerians prayed for the girls, whose plight has brought together ordinary people at a time of growing tension between Muslims and Christians.
Britain has said it hopes to help rescue the girls and to halt the five-year-old insurgency that has killed thousands of Muslims and Christians and has driven some 750,000 people from their homes.
The US Defence Secretary, Chuck Hagel, cautioned that it is "going to be very difficult" to find the missing girls. In an interview with ABC's This Week aired yesterday, he said: "It's a vast country ... but we're going to bring to bear every asset we can possibly use."
A leading Nigerian rights group yesterday demanded the UN Security Council impose sanctions on Boko Haram.
"The future of these missing schoolgirls hangs in a balance. The council should not leave them to fend for themselves," said Adetokunbo Mumuni, executive director of the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project.
- Independent, AFP
