Oren Dorell

USA TODAY

Nigerian teachers Monday begged a radical Islamist group to "have mercy" on as many as 234 girls dragged from their school for going to classes, the latest incident that shows how poorly Nigeria has been handling a rising insurgency, analysts say.

School headmistress Asabe Kwambula called on the militants to "have mercy on the students" and for the government to do more to find the girls, the BBC reported.

The Nigerian military, local officials and girls who escaped the April 15 kidnapping at the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok blamed the attack on the Muslim terror group Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sinful."

The kidnapping shows that Boko Haram's strength "appears to be increasing. The government's ability to provide security to its citizens appears to be decreasing," says John Campbell, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria from 2004 to 2007.

Boko Haram was responsible for 3,982 deaths so far this year, according to the Nigeria Security Tracker website that Campbell maintains at the Council on Foreign Relations. The government campaign to eradicate the terrorists, however, has caused almost as many deaths in the same time period, according to the database.

Boko Haram opposes the education of girls, and it has kidnapped girls in the past to use as cooks and sex slaves. Its earlier gun and bombing attacks on schools have killed hundreds of children.

But the massive kidnapping by militants who want to create an Islamic state in this oil-rich country that is half Christian and half Muslim is unprecedented.

Education officials have reported that 85 children had been taken from the school. On Monday, parents said that 234 girls are missing, nearly three times the number reported by education officials, according to the Associated Press. As many as 32 girls have escaped, according to news reports.

The higher figure came out when the Borno state governor insisted a military escort take him to the town. Security officials had told Gov. Kashim Shettima that it was too dangerous for him to drive to Chibok, 80 miles from Maiduguri, the Borno state capital and birthplace of the Boko Haram terrorist network blamed for the abductions.

Over the weekend, the military retracted an earlier statement that it had freed more than 100 of 129 girls it had said were abducted. The discrepancy in the figures could not immediately be resolved. Government forces were reportedly searching a forest near the border with Cameroon with help of vigilantes and local volunteers.

The attack on the school highlighted the government's inability to protect its citizens, says J. Peter Pham, director of the Atlantic Council's Africa Center.

"The failure of the government to even to get a clear count further reinforces a perception of systemic governmental failure that plays into the narrative not only of Boko Haram, but also other dissident groups opposing Nigeria's constitutional order," Pham said.

The school raid was the latest in a number of brazen attacks and violent government reprisals this year.

• On April 14, hours before the school raid, Boko Haram killed 75 in a bus station blast in Abuja, the Nigerian capital. The group's leaders, Abubakar Shekau, claimed responsibility for the attack in a video last week.

• On March 14, Boko Haram attacked the heavily fortified Giwa military barracks in Maiduguri, freeing comrades from a detention facility. The military then executed about 600 unarmed recaptured detainees, according to Amnesty International.

• In February, Boko Haram attacked the farming village of Izghe and the fishing village of Doron Baga, shooting and hacking to death at least 106 Christian men they had rounded up, according to CNN.

The group seeks to replace Nigeria's government with an Islamic state, but its vision is so radical that even most Nigerians who have embraced sharia, or Koranic law, reject Boko Haram, Pham said. Still, the group has continued the pace and lethality of its operations in part because of how the Nigerian government has executed its campaign against it, he said.

Rather than launch a counterinsurgency operation including local intelligence, economic development and the resolution of political grievances on Boko Haram's home turf, Nigeria has relied entirely on its military, which has been poorly equipped and poorly trained since the end of military rule in 1999, Pham said.

The approach has failed to provide security for the local population, and "if they're not secure, they won't be informing — they'll be in fear of the militants," he said.

The successful French military operation in Mali against al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in that country pushed Boko Haram and their al-Qaeda associates back into Nigeria. And Nigeria has also failed to enlist the cooperation of its neighbors, allowing Boko Haram units under attack to "jump the border to Cameroon, Niger, Chad and even across Niger to Mali, and then come back," Pham said.

The recent attacks come as oil-rich Nigeria prepares to celebrate its new status as Africa's biggest economy, replacing South Africa on the top rung. President Goodluck Jonathan announced he will deploy 6,000 troops to protect delegates to a meeting of the World Economic Forum on Africa, set to take place May 7-9 in Abuja. But the declaration has prompted criticism among the nation's pundits and citizenry.

"The Nigerian press is saying if they can spend such resources to protect foreigners for a glorified shindig, why can't they protect their own people," Pham said.

An editorial by the website All Africa called Nigeria "a failed state," citing a state of emergency in a third of the country and security concerns that should merit an emergency declaration in another third of the country.