In a sign that the government is reacting to growing pressure at home and abroad, a statement from the Nigerian police high command said anyone who "volunteers credible information that will lead to the location and rescue of the female students" would be eligible for the reward. It added: "Any information given would be treated anonymously and with utmost confidentiality."
Boko Haram is holding 276 girls from a raid on a school in Chibok on 15 April and a further eight, aged between eight and 15, taken in an overnight raid on a village on Monday, also in its stronghold in north-eastern Borno state. Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the group's main faction, released a video on Monday in which he threatened to sell the schoolgirls as slaves.
On Monday, insurgents shot dead scores of people in a market in Gamboru Ngala, a town close to the border with Cameroon, in apparent retaliation for locals "collaborating" with soldiers stationed across Borno as part of a state of emergency imposed last year.
State information commissioner Mohammed Bulama told the Associated Press that shops and homes were set ablaze and razed in the violence, which lasted for 12 hours.
He said the death toll was in the "high hundreds" but added that the government was awaiting further details from the military.
News of the reward and the killings came as the British government announced it would send a small group of experts to Nigeria to assist with the hunt for the missing girls. The team will work alongside US military and law enforcement officers tasked by President Barack Obama with providing technical assistance to the Nigerian authorities.
Washington has stopped short of pledging troops, but London has said it is prepared to send special forces and intelligence-gathering aircraft.
It is understood that the British team, from Whitehall departments including defence, international development and the Foreign Office, may include military officers but will concentrate on planning, coordination and advice to local authorities, rather than getting involved in operations on the ground to free the girls.
The Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, accepted the UK offer of help in a phone call with David Cameron, shortly after the prime minister told the Commons that the mass abduction was "an act of pure evil".
Cameron, who said the abductions had "united people across the planet to stand with Nigeria to help find these children and return them to their parents", added that Britain was ready to provide whatever assistance it could.
Obama, who has led the mounting international outcry over the abductions, has said the US is doing its utmost to help bring the "terrible situation" to a swift and safe end.
"In the short term our goal is obviously to help the international community, and the Nigerian government, as a team to do everything we can to recover these young ladies," he told NBC.
"But we're also going to have to deal with the broader problem of organisations like this that … can cause such havoc in people's day-to-day lives."
Actor and UNHCR special envoy Angelina Jolie condemned the Chibok abductions in Paris as "unthinkable cruelty and evil".
Human rights groups have documented the brutal treatment of women and girls who were abducted and used as sex slaves.
Parents said the Boko Haram video, which showed Shekau laughing as he made his taunts, had confirmed their worst fears. "There is no way to describe what we are feeling because of this news. It is just one long nightmare," said one woman whose daughter and niece were abducted.
In Chibok, desperate relatives welcomed news of assistance from the US and Britain. "I just wish they could have done this earlier. Maybe by now we would have had our girls back," said a teacher, Danuma Mpur, whose two nieces were taken.
Local officials arrived in the village on Wednesday for a meeting expected to last several hours. Parents had asked for the meeting to be held in the school grounds, surrounded by charred buildings, Mpur added.
Danjuma Mohammed, a resident of Waraba village, where the other eight girls were abducted on Monday, said: "The Boko Haram live in the bush all around us. We are willing to help the soldiers even if it is a risk for us."
Nigeria's hosting this week of the World Economic Forum on Africa has been overshadowed by the incidents. Demonstrators planned to hold a sit-in on Wednesday afternoon, despite tight security seeing swaths of the capital, Abuja, virtually empty.
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