Nigeria's "Lucky" Schoolgirls

"I am really lucky and I can thank God for that. But God must help all of them ... Their parents are worrying. Every day, everyone is crying."
16-year-old Nigerian escapee schoolgirl

"Every information relayed to security agencies has so far been investigated, including the search of all places suspected as a possible hideaway of the kidnapped girls."
Nigerian Information Minister Labaran Maku

"I am so very sad because the government of Nigeria did not take care of our children and does not now care about our children. All we have left is to pray to God to help them and help us."
Mother of abducted schoolgirl

Four female students of government secondary school Chibok, who were abducted by gunmen and reunited with their families, walk together in Chibok, Nigeria. They are among the 53 girls who escaped abduction by Islamic extremist kidnappers. The girls did not want to be identified by name and refused to speak to reporters when they were photographed in Chibok, the town from which the mass kidnapping of more than 300 girls took place on April 15. (AP Photo/Haruna Umar, File)

"Don't worry, we're soldiers. Nothing is going to happen to you." That reassurance lasted for the first little while as uniformed gunmen posing as Nigerian soldiers come to rescue hundreds of schoolgirls from potential abduction raced through their school. Then, as the men went into a storeroom at the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School to remove all the food, commanding the girls to gather outside, they set fire to the room.

"They ... started shouting, 'Allahu Akhbar', (God is great)", recounted the 16-year-old girl who had escaped their custody. "And we knew." They had been aware of gunshots coming from a nearby town as they gathered in the school dormitory. When the gunmen burst in, wearing uniforms, promising their rescue from their feared assailants, their first reaction was belief, and relief. Until they understood these were Islamic extremist Boko Haram members.

The girls were kidnapped, driven away in pickup trucks heading into the nearby dense forest. That was three weeks ago. At the time of transit during a stop, about fifty girls managed to save themselves by sprinting past their distracted captors and heading for safety. Since then it has become known that two of the girls who were spirited away died of snake bite venom, and about twenty of the students have become ill.

Others have been "married" to some of their captors who exchanged them for the equivalent of $12. Others still were reputed to have been taken across the border, for sale. The Chibok girls' school is located in northeastern Nigeria, an elite academy in Borno state where both Muslim and Christian girls have been educated. The school, like others in the area, had been closed for fear of just such attacks, but temporarily opened to permit the girls to write final exams.

A local government official received a warning on April 14 of an impending invasion by about 200 heavily armed militants travelling in 20 pickup trucks and about 30 motorcycles toward Chibok. He in turn alerted the 15 soldiers tasked with guarding the town, and after that he roused the sleeping residents with the alarm, urging them to run into the bush and the hills nearby. Those 15 soldiers forwarded an SOS to the closest barracks, an hour's drive away on a dirt road. There was no response.

When the Boko Haram terrorists arrived two hours later the soldiers fought them, outnumbered and outgunned for an hour and a half, hoping reinforcements would arrive, but they never did. When they ran out of ammunition and one of their number was killed they fled the scene allowing the jihadis to approach the school. The young girl recounting the events spoke of too many uniformed men flooding the school to even count. Why school authorities were not also alerted and urged to move the girls is safety is a mystery.

Once they set the school on fire, the girls were herded by the terrorists onto three pickup trucks which then drove through three villages before the vehicle behind carrying fighters broke down, and offered the opportunity to those who were alert to the possibility, to escape. One student said, "We should go! Me, I am coming down. They can shoot me if they want but I don't know what they are going to do with me otherwise."

"We ran and ran, so fast. That is how I saved myself. I had no time to be scared, I was just running. I'm the only girl in my family, so I hold a special place and everyone was so happy. But that didn't last long." The Defence Ministry stated the next day that soldiers had rescued all the girls but eight, citing a statement from the school principal. The principal denied saying any such thing and the statement was retracted.

Villagers joined a search party to find the abducted girls, receiving directions from villagers along the way who claimed to have seen the abductors and the girls on a forest path. An old man at a fork in the road warned them that they were close to the camp, but should they challenge the terrorists it was entirely possible they and their daughters might be killed, persuading the searchers to turn back to Chibok.

Those same searchers, among them the parents of the girls, question how it could be that they came within a few kilometres of where their daughters were being held, but the military was unsuccessful in discovering their whereabouts. Soldiers have claimed to have been demoralized with Boko Haram better armed than they; instead of equipment, they receive little more than a meal a day.