by Isha Sesay
Less than a month before Priscilla, Mary, Saa, Dorcas, and 391 other girls and 135 boys were to gather to take their Senior School Certificate Examinations, Borno State officials announced that all state secondary schools would close due to stepped-up Boko Haram attacks. “They are to remain closed until the security situation in the state improves,” said the state’s governor, Kashim Shettima, to the BBC Hausa language service. But he decided that the secondary school in Chibok should stay open and serve as an exam center for the school’s final-year students and those from places like Askira, Bama, and Konduga, nearby local districts where students had been unable to take their national and regional exams due to shuttered schools.
Despite being designated as an exam center, the school still didn’t have a significant security presence. While the students pored over SSCE questions, you’d typically find only three armed men patrolling the grounds, a combination of soldiers and police officers in their respective uniforms. They stayed in place till nightfall, when the responsibility of securing the girls in their hostels reverted to Mr. Jida and Kaka, who were both very old and tired.
Earlier that Monday, the entire school had been bustling with activity. Some of the arts stream students had been tucked away in class taking a government exam, while those on the sciences side were exam-free for the day and spent the hours gleefully milling about the hostels.
In Mwoda House, Priscilla was at peace. As a science student, she had a chemistry exam the next day. She was feeling confident. This would be her sixth assessment. She’d already taken math, English, biology, agriculture, and physics. At this point, Priscilla couldn’t wait for the whole trial to be over and to return home. She had a plan for what to do the minute she was through the door: spend as much time as possible by her mother’s side, see friends, and generally just enjoy being with loved ones. Being home, though, wasn’t the only reason this schoolgirl was excited about finishing. Completion also held the promise of a new chapter in Priscilla’s journey and advancement to a new place of learning. Finishing these exams would move her one step closer to her long-cherished dream of becoming a doctor.
When Priscilla wasn’t studying that Monday, she was hanging out with a group of girls from her neighborhood. In between studying and laughing, they paused to grab plates from their personal stash and make the short walk over to the school canteen. The group collected a serving of what was on offer and took their full plates back to eat in the hostel. Priscilla spent the latter part of the evening sitting outside, watching a handful of girls play games that occasionally drew loud cheers for the winners from some of the spectators. When she finally climbed into her top bunk it was close to eleven o’clock, and she fell asleep quickly. Priscilla had no concerns about what was happening at the gate, or whether Kaka was nodding off in a corner. Truthfully, she never even gave it a second thought. Concerns about her personal safety were the farthest thing from her mind.
Saa was also one of those enjoying a day off and feeling pretty good about the next day’s chemistry test. So much so, this eighteen-year-old had had no reservations about heading into Chibok town to spend a long weekend with her father’s sister, whom she hadn’t seen in a long while. Saa then returned to her dorm room in Mwoda House that Monday around five o’clock with bags full of peanut oil, onions, and boiled nuts, all gifts from her aunt. She also brought back leftover ground yam and stew to share with her friends, Blessing and Glory. The three girls were in high spirits, excitedly tucking into the food and swapping tales from their short time apart. There was little out of the ordinary. They stayed together throughout the evening as they usually did. By ten thirty, Saa and Blessing lay on a mattress on the dorm floor, while Glory rested nearby on a bottom bunk. Before long, Saa had dozed off, and when Glory whispered her goodnight to Blessing before drifting off to sleep, Saa was none the wiser. She was already in deep sleep.
It was well after midnight when Saa opened her eyes. Blessing was tapping her frantically. “Get up, get up! Can’t you hear what’s happening?”
Saa made out the sounds of wild shooting in Chibok town, which was only a fifteen-minute walk from their school, and the sounds jolted her wide awake. The moment she heard “Allahu Akbar,” she knew Boko Haram had arrived in Chibok. This wasn’t her first experience with the terror group. Several months earlier they’d attacked her family’s village of Askira early one morning. The clamor of “Allahu Akbar” and guns going off were one and the same. Blessing immediately started searching through her own belongings, looking for money. Once she’d found it, Saa watched as her friend tore off her nightclothes and jammed the cash into the pair of socks she hurriedly slipped on. Saa now sprung up, ripping off the skimpy vest she’d been sleeping in and replacing it with a red blouse and a blue-and-white wrapper—a piece of fabric commonly draped around the waist by African women which fashions a skirt. She grabbed her cell phone—which the girls were usually forbidden from having in school, but the rule had been eased because it was exam time. At this point all the girls in her dorm room were awake. There was no shouting or screaming, just panicked faces, frantic movements, and hushed voices, each asking again and again, “What is happening? What should we do now?”
From their dormitory they could see flames. Something was burning in nearby Chibok town. The girls had no way of knowing that the mob of men had peeled off into different marauding bands. Some busied themselves with torching and ransacking the town center, as others made bullets fall like heavy raindrops from the night’s sky. Meanwhile, there was another contingent moving determinedly through the dark toward the Government Girls Secondary School. Saa and the others pried open their room’s door, peered outside, and stepped into the yard. Other dormitory doors were also opening, and soon the compound was full.
Seventeen-year-old Mary, likewise, had been bewildered when she woke. Still wearing her school uniform—a blue check blouse and matching wrapper—she’d fallen asleep outside on a mat with a bunch of friends, in an attempt to escape the stifling April heat in her dorm room. As soon as the shooting started up in the town, Grace, who was one of her best friends, rushed over to rouse her. Thanks to the big, fat moon shining brightly that night, Mary could immediately see panic-stricken girls dashing around the compound. Within minutes, she’d joined a gathering of fifty girls from her Christian fellowship group. All bowed their heads as a passionately devout girl called Monica Enoch led them in prayers. “We should believe in God and nothing will happen,” she urged them. The group intoned the same four words, “God shall protect us.”
Priscilla had been in a deep sleep when Hannah, a girl from the same area of Chibok, shook her awake. “Priscilla, Priscilla, wake up! Can’t you hear what is going on?”
Almost as soon as she opened her eyes, the sound of sustained gunfire and explosions crowded out the thoughts in her head. There was something else.
“Allahu Akbar . . .”
“Allahu Akbar . . .”
“Allahu Akbar . . .”
Those words filled the eighteen-year-old with terror. There was a time when the melodious sound of “Allahu Akbar” had rung out across the towns and villages throughout Nigeria’s northeast, and the first thought among those who heard it was that it was an invitation to prayer and quiet contemplation. But that was prior to 2009, before Boko Haram made the Arabic words its war cry and a harbinger of death and destruction. With the school being so close to town, Priscilla could distinctly hear the terrified screams of the townspeople echoing through the darkness along with the recurrent “Allahu Akbar.” Unlike Saa, Priscilla was less certain about who had brought terror to her town that night. She suspected it was Boko Haram, but prayed she was wrong.
Priscilla quickly got out of bed. She was still wearing her brown check blouse and wrapper when she followed Hannah a few minutes later. She found the rest of her housemates standing right outside the dorm room. Several of them already had their belongings packed in bags. Beams from different flashlights illuminated girls with fear-filled eyes a
nd small bundles balanced on their heads, while others had wrapped a few items in swathes of cloth and tied them around their waists.
“What is that noise?” Priscilla asked.
“We don’t know,” some of the stunned girls replied.
“Maybe terrible people have entered the town,” another girl added.
They had all heard the horror stories of Boko Haram attacks, particularly those on schools.
As Priscilla was house captain of Mwoda House, the job of getting everyone in order fell to her. All the house captains were jointly responsible for keeping each other informed if there was an emergency at the school. She quickly ran to Ganna House next door. Its captain was a tall, fair-skinned girl with wary eyes called Bernice. She was fast asleep when Priscilla entered her dorm room and shook her awake.
“Bernice, wake up! You must gather your girls! There is some sort of attack happening in town!” Priscilla was gone before Bernice was even fully awake.
She returned to her housemates with an important reminder: “You all remember what the principal told us? We’ve been told that we should not run if we hear something.” All the girls nodded quietly. “But this is a very different situation. So what should we do?” With furrowed brows and eyes wide with confusion, the girls scanned each other’s faces.
“It is better for us to run!” one said.
“No—it’s better for us to pray,” another answered.
“We should run!” The girls continued to debate.
“Prayer can help. Let us wait and see what God will do for us.”
“How are you going to run with all of this tied around you?” Priscilla asked those poised to sprint away, holding their most prized possessions.
“It’s only our Bibles and a few other small things, so it won’t be too heavy.”
The girls struggled with their choices. Should they flee into the night, uncertain of what may be lying in wait beyond the school walls? Or simply stay put, right where they were, with the risk of being trapped if Boko Haram burst into their school?
“Let’s pray, before we do anything,” Priscilla said. At her instruction, the dozens of girls, Christian and Muslim, sat together on the ground and drew close to form one group. They bowed their heads in desperate prayer. The chaos from the town was spreading. The praying girls could hear doors opening and closing all around them, followed by quickened footsteps.
Priscilla thought back to a few months earlier. Three strange things had happened at the Chibok school. The first involved a letter found on its grounds warning of an attack if the school wasn’t closed. Rumors had spread quickly among the students, and soon the entire school was gripped by fear. Within days a special assembly was called for the staff and students, and much to Priscilla’s surprise, an imam and a pastor were also present. So many girls had been badly shaken. The two men of God were probably there to comfort them, she’d concluded. But in fact, the clergy had shown up to make fresh threats of their own.
The pastor kicked things off with his message. “Let the person who dropped the letter come out. If you don’t, I will pray for the person who did it so something bad may follow the person.” Next came the imam, who offered his own Islamic-tinged curses and prayers. The school’s principal, Mrs. Asabe Kwambura, who was increasingly far more likely to be found in her house in the state capital of Maiduguri than in school, was present that day and offered advice to the dumbfounded girls. “What the imam and the pastor just did is a serious thing . . . don’t joke with it. So if you are the one, you’d better come and explain yourself, so they will know what to do before something happens to you.”
Priscilla and her friends seethed quietly, wondering among themselves why they were being intimidated and blamed when they knew nothing about the letter’s origins. Several of them told their parents about their religious visitors’ supernatural threats, including Priscilla, who admitted to her parents that she was afraid.
“Don’t worry. Nothing will happen to you,” they assured her, “if you’re not the one who threw the letter.”
And that was that.
A few weeks later, pandemonium broke out a second time.
It was early evening, around seven thirty, when a handful of girls in Jetau House saw a creature of some sort trying to enter their hostel building. Panicked, they took off, screaming as they ran and whipping the rest of the girls into a frenzy, who then zigzagged through the compound in a state of complete confusion. A few days later the staff dismissed the entire episode as a case of childish misperception. They told the girls that a cat had tried to enter Jetau House, nothing more sinister. Priscilla was far from convinced, but like all the others had dared not challenge individuals who were older. Besides, the cat explanation was soon backed up with threats of punishment in yet another hastily called gathering.
This time, the vice-principal, Yerima Pudza, did the talking. His message was brief and to the point. “It was a cat that tried to enter Jetau House, so you shouldn’t have run. In the future if you see something strange, do not run and repeat what just happened here, with all of you running about the place. If you do, I will punish everyone who is involved!”
Next he called Priscilla and the other house captains together. “If something happens again and the girls are trying to run out of school, make sure you take down the names of all the girls.” Everyone took in the vice-principal’s stern warning and was fearful. Priscilla’s father’s advice this time around was also brief. “Pray and nothing will happen,” he said.
But something else did happen. The third incident occurred less than a month later.
On this particular March evening, with dinner and evening prayers over, the girls were filling their time however they liked without any oversight from the staff living nearby. One girl had been absentmindedly looking out the window when she saw a figure—a man—perched on the wall surrounding their hostel. She motioned to the other girls in her dorm room to come over. Before long a horde of girls from the different houses were streaming in to stare at the individual. Priscilla couldn’t make out his features, because he was too far away, but it was clear there was a man sitting on their hostel wall. The tense calm eventually gave way to outright panic. Soon screams could be heard as the girls once again ran wildly in every direction. Some girls whose families lived near the school scaled and leapt over the wall in the blink of an eye and headed home. A handful were hurt in that melee, including Saa, who injured her foot and wound up needing to take a week off to fully recover.
The girls never did find out who the man was or where he was from. On the other hand, there was no hiding the vice-principal’s fury. “You must not run! If something happens in this school, you must stay in your hostels and wait for your teachers to arrive!”
So now on this hot April night, Priscilla and the rest of the girls from Mwoda House were doing exactly what they’d been told. The smell of smoke from Chibok town filled their nostrils, but they dutifully remained on the school grounds and waited for their teachers. Meanwhile, the attackers continued firing their guns wildly into the darkness.
A short distance away in Chibok town, a cell phone was ringing in Esther and Yakubu’s house. It was late and everyone had been asleep for hours.
“Where’s your baby?” asked Esther’s brother-in-law, Bana.
The mother of five still wasn’t fully awake, and she struggled to focus on what she was hearing. But right away she felt there was something very wrong. Why would he be asking about Dorcas, her fifteen-year-old daughter who was down the road at the Government Girls Secondary School?
“She’s in school,” Esther replied drowsily.
Bana told her Boko Haram was moving steadily across the sandy-dusty terrain, heading straight for sleeping Chibok town.
Her heart lurched and Esther was now fully awake. “What?” she screamed into the phone. Flustered, she felt her mind racing: What to do first? What next? Dear God!
She was alone in the dark bedroom. April’s muggy heat had driven he
r husband, Yakubu, outdoors to sleep on a mat. The warm air hung heavily in their bedroom. She scrambled to find the blouse she’d tossed onto a pillow hours earlier. Bana was still on the line as she dressed hurriedly and rushed out to the veranda.
“Yakubu!” she called out, as she awoke him. “Your brother.” She thrust the phone in his face. Esther stood completely still, trying to piece together the bits and pieces she could hear from their conversation. When he hung up, her husband confirmed her worst fears. “They may be heading to the school.”
“Where is my baby? Where is my baby?” she muttered desperately as fearful thoughts rose up in her mind. Dorcas was her everything. Esther’s heart pounded in her ears. She needed to find her. Nothing could happen to her precious firstborn. Bana’s words kept echoing in her mind. Those Boko boys are in town . . .
Esther reached for the cellphone to dial her daughter when she remembered and felt sick. She’d confiscated Dorcas’s phone just a few days earlier, when she’d been home prior to exams. Dorcas was wise beyond her years, diligent and responsible; she’d never caused them a moment’s problem. But Esther had felt a motherly duty to do everything possible to make sure the teenager remained focused. For Esther, this meant eliminating all unnecessary distractions. Now her overzealousness had put Dorcas out of reach, and Esther was awash with anxiety. Should she run to the school? That would take too long. What could she do?
Her mind raced for a solution. She thought of Joyce, a distant cousin married to one of the teachers who lived in the staff quarters on the school grounds. Esther quickly scanned her contacts list searching for Joyce’s number and hit Call. She would ask Joyce to warn her baby of the disaster that was coming. She waited for her relative to answer, but heard no reassuring click and no hello. Instead, the number just rang and rang. Esther’s chest tightened. Why wasn’t Joyce answering? Could it be that she was just asleep? Esther knew her cousin often put her phone on silent when she went to bed at night. Is that why she wasn’t picking up? Neither she nor Yakubu knew what to think. They considered their limited options and struggled to stay calm as the minutes ticked by.