Saratu Dauda was kidnapped. It was 2014, and when she was 16, she was riding in a truck full of classmates, driving into the jungles of northeastern Nigeria. The driver was a member of the terrorist organization “Boko Haram.” A few miles behind them, the Chibok girls’ boarding school was set on fire.
She said she then noticed some girls jumping out of the back of the truck, some alone and some in pairs, holding hands. They ran and hid in the bushes as the truck moved slowly forward.
But before she jumped, one of the girls sounded the alarm and shouted for the others to “fall down and run away”, Ms Dada said. The kidnappers stopped, secured the truck, and moved on, in a move that, for Dauda, would change her nine years in captivity.
“If she hadn’t shouted that, we would all have fled,” Dauda said in a series of interviews last week in the city of Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram’s violent insurgency.
Exactly 10 years ago, these 276 captives, known as Chibok Girls, were kidnapped from their dormitories and charged with Michelle Obamalaunched by churches that support mostly Christian student causes and activists who use the slogan “Bring Back Our Girls.”
“The only crime these girls committed was to go to school,” said Allen Manasseh, a youth leader from Chibok who has campaigned for their release for years.
Since the kidnapping, their lives have taken a completely different turn. Some escaped almost immediately; A few years later, after negotiations, 103 people were released. About a dozen people currently live abroad, including in the United States. As many as 82 people are still missing, either killed or still being held hostage.
Chibok was the first mass school kidnapping in Nigeria, but far from the last. Today, kidnappings—including large numbers of children— has become a business Across West African countries, paying ransom is the main motivation.
“The tragedy in Chibok is happening every week,” said Pat Griffiths, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Maiduguri.
The Chibok girls are only the most prominent victims of a 15-year conflict with Islamist militants that has largely left hundreds of thousands of people dead and uprooted millions from their homes, but has largely eclipsed other wars. forgotten.
More than 23,000 people in northeastern Nigeria are registered missing with the Red Cross – the second-highest number of disappearances in the world after iraq. But Mr Griffith said the figure was a vast underestimate.
Ms. Dauda said that before her abduction, she was a happy teenager living in a close-knit Christian family. She loves playing with dolls and dreams of becoming a fashion designer. She was her father’s pet and adored her mother.
In the months after their arrest, Dauda said, the girls slept outside the Sambisa forest, a Boko Haram hideout, listened to a steady stream of Islamic preachers and argued over a limited water supply. When the two girls tried to escape, they were whipped in front of others, she said.
Then, she said, they were given a choice: either get married or become slaves who could be called upon to do chores or make love.
Ms. Dada chose marriage, converted to Islam, and changed her name to Aisha. She met a man in his twenties whose job was to take videos of Boko Haram fighting. A few hours after they met, they were married.
He was not cruel to her, she said, but a few months later he came home one day to find her playing with a doll she had made out of clay and made clothes for.
“Are you playing with your idol? Do you want to cause trouble for me?” she remembered him saying. She got angry and left home to live with another girl from Chibok. She said he divorced her when he realized she wouldn’t come back.
She soon married another Boko Haram fighter, Mohammed Musa, a welder who made weapons, and over time they had three children.Although she is still a hostage of Boko Haram ruthless leaderShe said she was happy they got everything they needed and were surrounded by people who “care about each other like a family.”
Other escapees said the Chibok girls were treated much better than other kidnapping victims.
Ms. Dada refused to join a group of Chibok girls who were released in 2017 after government negotiations, her husband said in an interview last week.
“Many of them refuse to be taken home simply because they fear their families will force them to leave Islam,” Mr. Moussa said, or “they might be humiliated.”
But as time passed, Ms. Dauda kept track of friends who died in Chibok. Sixteen air and bomb attacks. Two are in labor. As a suicide bomber, Coerced by Boko Haram. One is a disease and one is a snake bite. She noticed that most of those killed in the air strikes were women and children, and she wondered when it would be her turn.
Life gets harder. Ms. Dada said that when Boko Haram’s leader died and its powerful offshoot Islamic State West Africa Province took over the Sambisa forest, she and her husband found themselves on the wrong side and under suspicion. They feared they would become slaves. Late at night, they whispered about their escape. But Ms Dauda wanted to move faster than her husband and decided to go ahead. He refused to let her take the children and said he would go with them later.
One night at 3 a.m., she made a small packet of food, looked at the faces of her sleeping daughters, and said a brief prayer for protection. She fled their home. She waited under the tree to make sure no one saw her. She then walked in the bush for days, from village to village, telling people she was going to visit friends, and always leaving during morning prayers, when the men would be in the mosque, out of sight She leaves.
She met other fleeing women along the way, and together they surrendered to the military last May. She heard on the radio that the Chibok Girls had become something of a sensation, and she ended up experiencing it firsthand.
“Is this a Chibok girl?” she remembers one soldier being surprised to learn her identity. “We thank God.”
Six years have passed since the last negotiated release and many families have given up hope. Mr Manasseh said he had despaired over the years as three governments failed to bring all the girls home and mostly stopped talking to their families.
“Quiet,” he said. “This is a huge failure of government.”
Since Chibok, Nigerian schools have become hunting grounds for kidnappers of all kinds.Last month, dozens, possibly hundreds, of children Kidnapped in Kaduna StateHundreds of miles from territory controlled by Boko Haram and its Islamic State offshoot. Days earlier, hundreds of women and children were kidnapped while searching for firewood in the northeast.
After surrendering, Ms. Dada was taken to Maiduguri and entered a government rehabilitation program to undergo counseling and deradicalization. A few months later, she received word that her husband had escaped with his three daughters, and they were reunited.
She said she dreamed of seeing her parents again, hugging them and feeling their warmth. One day, she was allowed to leave the government facility with her children and visit them in Mbarara village.
She hugged her father and mother.
“She was crying and I was crying,” Ms. Dada said.
She said her father would provide a place for her and her husband to stay if they became Christians. But she refused, saying she had freely become a Muslim and wanted to remain one, although many believed she and other escapees were victims of Boko Haram indoctrination.
“I wasn’t brainwashed,” she said. “I have no doubts about what was explained to me.”
Her two daughters were named after her friends from Chibok. Zannira, 7, was named after a runaway girl. Five-year-old Saadatu was named after the child who was still imprisoned.
She said her husband recently gave their daughter a doll.
