Some of the schoolgirls abducted by militant group Boko Haram may never return home, according to Nigeria's influential former president Olusegun Obasanjo.
Mr Obasanjo said president Goodluck Jonathan's administration had taken too long to respond to the April mass abduction, in what were some of the most pessimistic comments yet on the fate of the girls from a member of the country's elite.
Once Mr Jonathan's mentor and one of his strongest political allies, Mr Obasanjo turned against him last December.
"I believe that some of them will never return. We will still be hearing about them many years from now," Mr Obasanjo told the BBC's Hausa-language radio service on Thursday, in comments echoed in an interview with Nigeria's Premium Times website.
The girls were snatched from a school in the north-eastern village of Chibok, near the Cameroon border, on April 14.
The warning from Mr Obasanjo, who stepped down in 2007 and nurtured Mr Jonathan's own rise to power, will dismay parents who have now waited 60 days for any news of their daughters.
Mr Obasanjo's criticisms underline divisions within his and Mr Jonathan's ruling People's Democratic Party, heightened by the failure of the government and army to rescue the girls and by political jostling ahead of presidential elections due in 2015.
"If you get all of them back, I will consider it a near-miracle ... Do you think they [Boko Haram] will hold all of them together up [until] now? The logistics for them to do that, holding over 200 girls together, is too much," Mr Obasanjo said, according to Premium Times. He's correct, of course, then to take 20 more girls last week would just exacerbate the logistics problem if the girls had not been split up into manageable groups, or some of them having been sold.
"If the administration had acted quickly, we could have rescued them," he said.
President under pressure to find more than 200 girls still missing
Boko Haram, which wants to set up an Islamist caliphate in Africa's largest economy, has fought back against an army offensive and killed thousands in bomb and gun attacks, striking as far afield as the central city of Jos and the capital Abuja.
"As these events get reported, it's bringing far more publicity for their [Boko Haram's] cause and it's putting pressure on the Nigerian government," Martin Roberts, a senior Africa analyst at research firm IHS, said.
What is Boko Haram?
Boko Haram became active in 2003 and is concentrated in northern Nigeria.
Boko Haram, which means "Western education is sinful", is loosely modelled on the Taliban movement in Afghanistan.
The group considers all who do not follow its strict ideology as infidels, whether they are Christian or Muslim.
It demands the adoption of Sharia law in all of Nigeria.
Activists have staged regular street protests demanding that Mr Jonathan step up efforts to free the girls.
The president has also faced hostile media coverage and a vociferous global #BringBackOurGirls Twitter campaign.
Mr Jonathan has traded accusations over the failure to crush Boko Haram with the main opposition party, which runs local authorities in the north-eastern regions at the heart of the five-year-old revolt.
Mr Obasanjo, twice president and a powerful political godfather, has progressively fallen out with Mr Jonathan.
In a letter leaked in December, he said any decision by Mr Jonathan to seek a second term in the 2015 poll would be "morally flawed".
Mr Jonathan has not confirmed he will run again, but campaign-style posters and banners bearing his image have sprung up around the capital.
His assumed ambition to seek re-election is a thorny issue in religiously mixed Nigeria, where alternating the presidency between the majority Christian south and the mostly Muslim north has been considered an unwritten rule.
Mr Jonathan, a southern Christian, (Christian in name only - there is nothing of Christ that I can see in that man) was vice president and came to power when president Umaru Yar'Adua, a northern Muslim, died in May 2010 - three years into his first term.
Underlining the growing pressure for more action on Boko Haram, Nigeria's defence ministry said on Thursday it was studying the military tactics used by Sri Lanka to crush the island nation's rebel Tamil Tigers. I can explain it to you in one word - massacre!
Mr Obasanjo said president Goodluck Jonathan's administration had taken too long to respond to the April mass abduction, in what were some of the most pessimistic comments yet on the fate of the girls from a member of the country's elite.
"I believe that some of them will never return. We will still be hearing about them many years from now," Mr Obasanjo told the BBC's Hausa-language radio service on Thursday, in comments echoed in an interview with Nigeria's Premium Times website.
The girls were snatched from a school in the north-eastern village of Chibok, near the Cameroon border, on April 14.
The warning from Mr Obasanjo, who stepped down in 2007 and nurtured Mr Jonathan's own rise to power, will dismay parents who have now waited 60 days for any news of their daughters.
Mr Obasanjo's criticisms underline divisions within his and Mr Jonathan's ruling People's Democratic Party, heightened by the failure of the government and army to rescue the girls and by political jostling ahead of presidential elections due in 2015.
"If you get all of them back, I will consider it a near-miracle ... Do you think they [Boko Haram] will hold all of them together up [until] now? The logistics for them to do that, holding over 200 girls together, is too much," Mr Obasanjo said, according to Premium Times. He's correct, of course, then to take 20 more girls last week would just exacerbate the logistics problem if the girls had not been split up into manageable groups, or some of them having been sold.
"If the administration had acted quickly, we could have rescued them," he said.
President under pressure to find more than 200 girls still missing
Boko Haram, which wants to set up an Islamist caliphate in Africa's largest economy, has fought back against an army offensive and killed thousands in bomb and gun attacks, striking as far afield as the central city of Jos and the capital Abuja.
"As these events get reported, it's bringing far more publicity for their [Boko Haram's] cause and it's putting pressure on the Nigerian government," Martin Roberts, a senior Africa analyst at research firm IHS, said.
What is Boko Haram?
Boko Haram became active in 2003 and is concentrated in northern Nigeria.
Boko Haram, which means "Western education is sinful", is loosely modelled on the Taliban movement in Afghanistan.
The group considers all who do not follow its strict ideology as infidels, whether they are Christian or Muslim.
It demands the adoption of Sharia law in all of Nigeria.
Activists have staged regular street protests demanding that Mr Jonathan step up efforts to free the girls.
The president has also faced hostile media coverage and a vociferous global #BringBackOurGirls Twitter campaign.
Mr Jonathan has traded accusations over the failure to crush Boko Haram with the main opposition party, which runs local authorities in the north-eastern regions at the heart of the five-year-old revolt.
Mr Obasanjo, twice president and a powerful political godfather, has progressively fallen out with Mr Jonathan.
In a letter leaked in December, he said any decision by Mr Jonathan to seek a second term in the 2015 poll would be "morally flawed".
Mr Jonathan has not confirmed he will run again, but campaign-style posters and banners bearing his image have sprung up around the capital.
His assumed ambition to seek re-election is a thorny issue in religiously mixed Nigeria, where alternating the presidency between the majority Christian south and the mostly Muslim north has been considered an unwritten rule.
Mr Jonathan, a southern Christian, (Christian in name only - there is nothing of Christ that I can see in that man) was vice president and came to power when president Umaru Yar'Adua, a northern Muslim, died in May 2010 - three years into his first term.
Underlining the growing pressure for more action on Boko Haram, Nigeria's defence ministry said on Thursday it was studying the military tactics used by Sri Lanka to crush the island nation's rebel Tamil Tigers. I can explain it to you in one word - massacre!
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