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.
However, 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.
Photo: AFP
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 219 hostages likely still being held and for families desperate for news, the nightmare continues.
Despite promises from the Nigerian government and military that the release or rescue of the hostages was imminent, 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.
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 Muslim extremist 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 reporters via university staff in an e-mail exchange.
The Chibok girls at AUN are studying a curriculum aimed at preparing them to start a four-year undergraduate program next year. Deborah said her dream is to work at the UN “to help my community in Chibok, Nigeria and the world.”
Others talk of becoming doctors or lawyers. All emphasize the importance of education. With degrees from the well-regarded university, those dreams may come true.
However, among the 21, the prospects feel bittersweet, as international attention returns to the plight of those thought to be still captive one year later.
Thoughts of their missing classmates are never far away and they pray for them every day, 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 that 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.”
The girls at the university 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.”
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan’s handling of the hostage crisis was criticized, especially over his administration’s failure to immediately recognize the severity of the attack and to swiftly launch a major rescue effort.
Jonathan’s defeat in last month’s general election to former Nigerian military ruler Muhammadu Buhari may have partly been caused by his inability to contain the Muslim violence. Boko Haram had already been suspected of committing crimes against humanity before the Chibok mass abduction focused global outrage.
However, the girls studying at AUN suggested that the extremist 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 radicalization, they said.
“I forgive Boko Haram for what they have done and I pray God forgives them too,” Blessing said.
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