Chibok girls' diary reveals how their abduction came about as a result of a failed robbery attempt

SOME of the freed Government Secondary School Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram in April 2014 have revealed that they and their classmates were kidnapped accidentally as the terrorist sect had originally set out to carry out a robbery.

Over three years ago, over 200 girls were kidnapped from their boarding school in Borno State in the middle of the night, sparking off an international campaign for their release. Since then, several of them have been released in a few batches, while some others had managed to escape too.

According to some of the freed girls, their abduction was the accidental outcome of a botched robbery. In a diary just published, Naomi Adamu, one of the freed girls, recalled that on the night of their kidnapping in April 2014, Boko Haram had not come to the school in Chibok to abduct the girls but rather to steal machinery for house building.

It appeared that when the robbery went sour, Boko Haram then decided to abduct the girls who were sleeping in the boarding school. Ms Adamu added that unable to find what they were looking for, the militants were unsure what to do with the girls.

She added: “One boy said they should burn us all and some of the other fighters said, ‘No, let us take them with us to Sambisa. If we take them to Shekau, he will know what to do."

Ms 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 last year. They are currently 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. So far, the authenticity of the diaries, written by Ms Adamu and her friend, Sarah Samuel, cannot be verified, nor their intended role as the government negotiates with Boko Haram for more releases.

Their diaries shed light not only on the horrors the girls endured under Boko Haram but their acts of resistance and their 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 Koranic lessons.

To hide the diaries from their captors, the girls would bury the notebooks in the ground, or carry them in their underwear. Three of the other Chibok girls also contributed to the undated chronicles, which were written mainly in passable English, with some parts scribbled in less coherent Hausa.

Ms Adamu said they wrote the diaries together, as when one person got tired, she would give it to another person to continue. He notes include how life in Sambisa Forest involved regular beatings, Koranic lessons, domestic drudgery and pressure to marry and convert.

While there, the girls’ spirits remained intact, as they devised amusing and mocking nicknames for the fighters, the diaries show. When five girls tried to escape, the militants tied them up, dug a hole in the ground and turned to one of their classmates, handing her a blade and issued a chilling ultimatum to cut off their heads or lose hers.