A video showing 15 of the 219 schoolgirls held by the jihadist group Boko Haram has added pressure on the Nigerian government to secure their release, after activists accused authorities of mishandling the case in the two years since their mass kidnap.
Boko Haram filmed the video in December and sent it to the government as 'proof of life'
April 14 marks two years since the Chibok girls were kidnapped
Activists slam President Buhari's government for not doing enough
Weeping parents identified the girls captured by Boko Haram fighters, who want to establish an Islamist state in north-east Nigeria and have waged a seven-year campaign of violence, killing thousands of people and displacing two million.
President Muhammadu Buhari, elected a year ago on a promise to end endemic graft and crush the group, said in December the government could talk to Boko Haram if credible representatives emerged.
In January he said the government was launching a new investigation into the kidnapping, vowing to return the girls captured at a school in the town of Chibok while taking exams — but little has emerged since then.
In the video, apparently taken in December and given to government officials by Boko Haram as proof of life for the negotiations, a person asks the 15 girls to say their names as they stand quietly in two rows, wearing headscarves.
"I saw all the girls and they are Chibok girls," Esther Yakubu, a parent of one of the abducted girls who saw the video said.
"I recognise some of them because we are in the same area with them."
Ms Yakubu was marching with some 30 other parents and activists to the presidential villa in the capital Abuja to demand the government do more to return the girls — police stopped them at the road leading to the villa.
Witnesses to the kidnapping, Nigerian military and security officials, Western diplomats and counter-terrorism experts blame a series of failings by politicians and the military in dealing with the militants, including a lack of co-ordination.
Information Minister Lai Mohammed said the government was still reviewing the video.
When asked about efforts to get the girls released he only said: "There are ongoing talks."
A top government official who declined to be named said an official reaction would only be made once the military had established the video's authenticity.
Activists said Mr Buhari's government was not doing enough, urging the state to use the video for clues to find the girls and speak to girls who had managed to flee Boko Haram captivity.
"The incredible wealth of information that victims of terrorists can offer our security forces is being lost in the current undefined and ineffective approach," Aisha Yesufu of the #BringBackOurGirls group said in a statement.