The night members of the dreaded Islamist sect, Boko Haram invaded and abducted over 200 girls of Government Secondary school, Chibok in Borno State will remain evergreen in the mind of Godiya Usman, 18.
She was on her bed reading that fateful night when gunmen dressed in military uniform stormed the school and asked all of them out.
Prior to taking them away, the abductors looted the school kitchen and carted away the food stuffs.
Godiya, who spoke via telephone from Chibok, narrated her ordeal. Below are excerpts:
“At around 11:30 in the night, most of the girls had not slept; I was reading on my bed when we started hearing noise of gun shots. Not quite long, we saw some men dressed in military uniform enter our hostel so; we happily did what they said because normally anytime there is an attack in town.
The soldiers use to come into our school to protect us. But by the time we got out, they asked us to show us where the school kitchen was, so we showed them then immediately they went there and took out bags of food stuffs and then set the kitchen on fire.
They also set our hostel on fire. Then it occurred to us that they were Boko Haram. They rounded us up at the gate and told us to enter a bus, when the 3 buses could not take us all, they sent some of their colleagues to town to go and get vehicles, those ones returned with a truck, which some of the girls entered.
We drove out of the town and into the bush. They stopped at every village, attacked people and burn their houses.
We planned in our truck that if we stop in any village and attack the village when they are not looking we should all jump down and run away.
So, when they stopped at the next village, the ones guiding also usual jump down and went into the village shooting.
We checked our side and they weren’t looking at us, the other girls on the other side of truck checked their own side and said it was clear.
So, I jumped down then I looked at the other girls they did not jump. So I stood up and started running when I had ran for about 50 meters, it sound as if some of the girls had also jump down but I could not see because it was dark.
So, I just kept running in the bush when I got tired I sat down and slept off. I was found by some vigilantes who took me home”.
