Nigeria girls who fled Boko Haram look to brighter future

LAGOS - A typical day for Deborah includes classes on a manicured university campus and exercise in the evening - basketball, volleyball or aerobics. On weekends, she studies, swims or just relaxes.

But the teenager's life now is one that was unimaginable 12 months ago.

On April 14 last year, she was in a packed dormitory at the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, northeastern Nigeria, seeking a night's sleep before writing end-of-term exams.

Boko Haram fighters stormed the school after sundown, kidnapping 276 girls.

The mass abduction provoked global outrage and brought unprecedented attention to an insurgency that has devastated northern Nigeria since 2009.

Deborah was one of 57 girls who escaped within hours of the attack. Her life has changed but for the other 219 hostages still being held and for families desperate for news, the nightmare continues.

Despite promises from the government and military that the release or rescue of the hostages was at hand, there has been no credible information concerning their whereabouts in months.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau vowed to sell the girls as "slaves" and later said they had been "married off". Experts say both are possible and they are unlikely to still be all together.

'Blessing in disguise'

Deborah and 20 other girls from Chibok who escaped Boko Haram captivity are now studying at the American University of Nigeria (AUN) in the northeastern city of Yola.

The privately-funded AUN does not look like other Nigerian universities and certainly bears little resemblance to Chibok, which even before the Islamist uprising began was a deeply impoverished town with poor roads and limited electricity supply.

Spread across a vast stretch of land on the outskirts of Yola, the campus includes an immaculate hotel, with a restaurant overlooking a pool that serves burgers and pizza, where faculty, including visiting Western professors, share sodas with their students.

"It is a beautiful environment," Deborah told AFP via university staff in an email exchange.

The Chibok girls at AUN are studying a curriculum aimed at preparing them to start a four-year undergraduate programme next year.

Deborah said her dream is to work at the United Nations "to help my community in Chibok, Nigeria and the world".

Others talk of becoming doctors or lawyers. All stress the importance of education. With degrees from the well-regarded AUN those dreams may come true.

But among the 21, the prospects feel bittersweet, as international attention returns to the plight of those still being held one year on.

Thoughts of their missing classmates are never far away and in their prayers daily, they said.

"We feel sad with the advantages we have now because so many from our hometown do not have these advantages," they added.

They also acknowledged they would almost certainly not be studying at the university had they not been kidnapped.

Mary put this conflict in starker terms: "When the insurgency struck, I was devastated but little did I know it was going to be a blessing in disguise."

Horror with a purpose

The Chibok girls at AUN felt united in a common goal to ensure that some good must come from last year's tragedy.

"It has been a horrible journey yet we believe that coming to AUN is for a purpose, which is to be an instrument of positive change in our hometown," Sarah said.

"We have not been broken by the attack. We see ourselves as the people who have been chosen to make positive future changes not just in Chibok, but in our country and the world," she added.

President Goodluck Jonathan's handling of the hostage crisis was heavily criticised, especially over his administration's failure to immediately recognise the severity of the attack and to swiftly launch a major rescue effort.

Jonathan's defeat in last month's general election to challenger Muhammadu Buhari may have partly been caused by his inability to contain the Islamist violence.

Boko Haram, whose name loosely translates from the Hausa language widely spoken in northern Nigeria as "Western education is forbidden", had already been suspected of committing crimes against humanity before the Chibok mass abduction focused global outrage.

But the girls studying at AUN suggested the Islamist foot-soldiers who carried out the kidnappings ultimately deserve mercy.

Northeastern Nigeria provides few opportunities and little hope of employment for young men, making them vulnerable to radicalisation, they said.

"I forgive Boko Haram for what they have done and I pray God forgives them too," Blessing said.

Nigeria's abducted schoolgirls: one year in captivity

Here is a timeline of significant events since the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in northeastern Nigeria a year ago on Tuesday.

April 2014

14: 276 girls, aged from 12 to 17, are seized from the remote town of Chibok in Borno state, northeastern Nigeria. Boko Haram gunmen storm the girls' boarding school, forcing them from their dormitories onto trucks and driving them into the bush. Fifty-seven girls manage to flee.

29: Parents lash out at the government's failure to rescue the girls.

May

1: Hundreds of parents, many dressed in red, protest in Chibok to demand help from the government and other countries.

5: Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau claims responsibility in a video statement for the mass abduction, and vows to sell the girls as slave brides.

7: US First Lady Michelle Obama tweets a picture of herself with a sign reading #BringBackOurGirls, joining a social media storm. The campaign also attracts politicians, actors and other prominent public figures, such as Pakistani education activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai and CNN star anchor Christiane Amanpour.

9: Amnesty International claims Nigeria's military was warned of the school attack but failed to take action due to lack of manpower. The military denies the allegation. The UN Security Council strongly condemns the mass kidnappings which it says "may amount to crimes against humanity" under international law.

10: British, French and US experts provide help for the search operation. China and Israel also offer assistance.

12: Boko Haram releases a new video showing about 100 of the missing girls, alleging the teenagers have converted to Islam and will not be released until militants are freed in a prisoner exchange.

17: Nigeria and its neighbours Benin, Chad, Cameroon and Niger vow to work together to fight Boko Haram in what Cameroon President Paul Biya describes as a "declaration of war".

21: The United States deploys 80 military personnel to Chad to help regional efforts to rescue the schoolgirls.

26: Nigeria's highest ranking military officer, Chief of Defence Staff Alex Badeh, says they have located the missing teenagers but warns a rescue operation would put their lives at risk.

27: News emerges that Nigeria's former president Olusegun Obasanjo has been in talks with Boko Haram to broker a deal to release the girls.

June

12: Representatives from Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Benin agree to strengthen joint efforts to find the schoolgirls and defeat Boko Haram.

July

18: Borno state Governor Kashim Shettima says 176 teachers have been killed and 900 schools destroyed in Borno since Boko Haram began attacking them in 2011, because they are centres of Western education

22: First meeting between Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and the schoolgirls' relatives.

September

25: Nigeria's police claim that one of the schoolgirls has been found but elders reject the claim.

October

14: Protesters mark six months since the abduction with a march on the Nigerian presidency but are blocked.

17: Nigeria's chief security spokesman Mike Omeri says no deal is in place to release the girls after the presidency says a ceasefire deal has been reached with Boko Haram. Boko Haram chief Shekau later dismisses the ceasefire claim and says all the girls have been "married off".

November

14: Boko Haram seizes Chibok. The army recaptures it two days later.

February 2015

8: Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai calls for global support to demand "urgent action" to release the girls, on their 300th day in captivity.

March

6: Work begins to rebuild the kidnapped girls' school in Chibok.

17: Nigeria's army chief admits there is "no news for now" about the girls' fate, despite military successes in recapturing towns from the insurgents.