Abuja - The mass
abduction of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls from Chibok -
the biggest publicity coup of Boko Haram's jihadist 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 and a copy of which has
been exclusively obtained by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
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 (some of the
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 the northeastern town of Chibok one night in April
2014 - a raid that sparked an international outcry and a viral
campaign on social media with the hashtag #bringbackourgirls.
Championed by former U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama - along
with a diverse cast of 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.
CLANDESTINE CHRONICLES
The 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 - whose name loosely
means 'Western education is sinful' in the local Hausa language
- 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.
"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 in the capital, where the girls are being kept
for assessment, rehabilitation and debriefing by the government.
"CONVERT OR BURN"
Life in the Sambisa involved regular beatings, Koranic
lessons, domestic drudgery and pressure to marry and convert.
The girls' spirits remained intact, as they devised amusing
and mocking nicknames for the fighters, the diaries show.
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 turned to one of their classmates.
The jihadists handed her a blade and issued a chilling
ultimatum: 'cut off the girls' heads, or lose your own'.
"We are begging them. We are crying. They said if next we
ran away, they are going to cut off our necks," Adamu wrote.
On another occasion, the militants gathered those girls who
had refused to embrace Islam, brought out jerrycans and
threatened to douse them in petrol then burn them alive.
"They said: 'You want to die. You don't want to be
Muslim,(so) we are going to burn you," read the diary entry.
As fear set in, the militants cracked into laughter - the
cans contained nothing but water, the girls wrote.
FEAR DOES THEIR BIDDING
One of the most striking excerpts illustrates the pervasive
fear spread by Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria, where the group
has killed 20 000 people and uprooted at least 2 million in a
brutal campaign that shows no signs of ending soon.
During their captivity in the Sambisa forest, some of the
Chibok girls escaped, and ended up in a nearby shop where they
asked the owners for help, as well as food and water.
"The girls said: 'We are those that Boko Haram kidnapped
from (the school) in Chibok,'" Adamu wrote. "One of the people
(in the shop) said: 'Are these not Shekau's children?'"
The shop owners let the girls stay the night.
But the next day they took them back to Boko Haram's base,
where the girls were whipped and threatened with decapitation.
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
from the government safe house in Abuja.
"Not everybody can survive that kind of thing," she added. "I
feel pained ... so pained. I'm still thinking about her."