Chibok girls that escaped defy militants by returning to school

The stranger offering scholarships was a woman named Godiya, a slim, quietly-spoken 27-year-old whose sister had been among the kidnapped schoolgirls. Nobody had asked Godiya, who has asked for her surname not to be used, to set off on a mission that put her directly in the crosshairs of the sect whose nickname means “western education is forbidden”. But in a conflict where the state has repeatedly failed to protect civilians – leaving around 10,000 dead last year alone – she became one of an increasing number of ordinarAdvertisementy Nigerians fighting back as best they could.

“I don’t talk much about it, because if these people [Boko Haram] come back, I will be one of their first targets for helping girls to come back to school,” she shrugged. “I had to take the risk. Whatever happens to me, I can say I tried.”

Last August, Godiya drove 250km north-west on the highway from Yola, where she works at the American University of Nigeria. Then, turning off the asphalt, she continued for another hour through a canopy of baobab trees that have served as Boko Haram’s hideout. Chibok lay at the end of the dust road, and over the next 10 days, she rode a motorbike pillion across its 10 wards, trying to persuade one family in each district to accept a scholarship for their traumatised daughter.

Her personal quest provides a glimpse of how a community brutalised by Boko Haram – and still mourning its lost sons and daughters – has rallied together as it takes tentative steps to recovery.

“Many of the other villages around here have kept quiet because they don’t think education is worth the risk of attracting Boko Haram’s ire,” said Abbana Lawan, a Chibok resident whose two nieces are among those still in captivity. “But we’re a community who understands the value of education.”

Before Boko Haram started kidnapping and killing children, its murderous hatred was directed chiefly against the state. Born to a policeman father in the sect’s heartland of Borno state, almost every milestone of Godiya’s life can be matched to an atrocity.

September 2004, the year she turned 16, was also the year her father was on a lunch break when Boko Haram attacked his police station, killing four of his colleagues. She remembers the roadside bombs that began in 2009, because one of her neighbours died in one. A starburst shrapnel scar across her hand is a reminder of the first time she witnessed the horror firsthand. When she recalls her eldest sibling’s engagement, she says, matter-of-factly: “We were worried because that was when they started burning down a lot of churches.”

Her father’s plan to escape the escalating conflict by moving his family to his ancestral farm in rural Chibok was soon shattered. Godiya’s younger sister was preparing to take exams when Boko Haram snatched her.