Secret diaries reveal kidnapping of Chibok girls was accidental
ABUJA: The mass abduction of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls from Chibok – the biggest publicity coup of Boko Haram’s militant insurgency – was the accidental outcome of a botched robbery, say the girls who spent three years in their brutal captivity.
The Chibok girls made the surprise revelation in secret diaries they kept while held prisoner.
Recalling the night of their kidnapping in April 2014, Naomi Adamu described in the diaries how Boko Haram had not come to the school in Chibok to abduct the girls, but rather to steal machinery for house building.
Unable to find what they were looking for, the militants were unsure what to do with the girls. Arguments swiftly ensued. “One boy said they should burn us all, and they (other fighters) said: ‘No, let us take them with us to Sambisa (Boko Haram’s remote forest base) ... if we take them to Shekau (the group’s leader), he will know what to do’,” Adamu wrote.
She was one of about 220 girls who were stolen from their school in April 2014 – a raid that sparked an international outcry and a viral campaign on social media with the hashtag – bringbackourgirls.
Championed by former US First Lady Michelle Obama – along with media celebrities – the campaign won international infamy for Boko Haram and helped galvanise the Nigerian government into negotiating for the girls’ release.
Adamu was among 82 of the Chibok girls released by Boko Haram in May – part of a second wave after 21 of them were freed in October. They are being held in a secret location in Abuja for what the government has called a “restoration process”.
A few others have escaped or been rescued, but about 113 of the girls are believed to be still held by the militant group.
The authenticity of the diaries, written by Adamu and her friend Sarah Samuel, cannot be verified, nor their intended role as the government negotiates with Boko Haram for more releases.
The diaries shed light not only on the horrors the girls endured but their acts of resistance, and staunch belief that they would one day go home.
The girls said they started documenting their ordeal a few months after the abduction, when Boko Haram gave them exercise books to use during Quranic lessons.
To hide the diaries the girls would bury the notebooks or carry them in their underwear.
Three other girls also contributed to the undated chronicles, written in passable English, with some parts scribbled in less coherent Hausa.
“We wrote it together. When one person got tired, she would give it to another person to continue,” Adamu, 24, said from the state safe house.
The girls’ spirits remained intact yet cruelty and brutality were ever present.
When five girls tried to escape, the militants tied them up, dug a hole in the ground, and handed one of their classmates a blade.
Their ultimatum: cut off the girls’ heads, or lose your own.
On another occasion, the militants gathered girls who refused to embrace Islam, brought out jerrycans and threatened to douse them in petrol then burn them alive.
As fear set in, the militants cracked into laughter – the cans contained nothing but water, the girls wrote.
Despite being flushed with relief at her own freedom, Adamu worries about her closest friend and co-author, Samuel, who is still with the group, having married one of its militants.
“She got married because of no food, no water,” Adamu said.
“Not everybody can survive that kind of thing.
“I feel pained ... so pained. I’m still thinking about her.” — Reuters
She got married because of no food, no water. Not everybody can survive that kind of thing.
Naomi Adamu