by Isha Sesay
Girl: My call to Nigerians is that they should leave the book that is not that of Allah and follow the Sunna [the sayings and deeds of the prophet]. Allah’s religion will move forward whether you like it or not. If you don’t agree you will die in your misery.
The girl in the video, calmly wielding the AK-47 and speaking in a clear, steady voice, was asked her name.
“Maida Yakubu,” she readily replied.
But Esther had only needed to hear the voice from behind the veil for a split second to know without a doubt it was indeed her Dorcas. The very first time she laid eyes on the images, Esther crumbled.
“For me, this video is torture.” She spoke plainly to the media about what she was going through. “I haven’t slept since I watched it. The tie that binds us is unbreakable. It’s just not possible that my daughter prefers her kidnappers to me.”
The searing image of her daughter so completely transformed initially erased all hope of her ever holding her child again. Since then, though, she has fallen back on her steadfast faith. It continues to be her bulwark against hopelessness. Esther repeats to herself and to anyone who will listen that her daughter’s statements must have been made under duress.
Aside from seeing Dorcas looking and sounding like an alien being to her own mother, most painful of all for Esther was watching the freed Chibok girls go back to school. On September 15, 2017, a total of 106 Chibok girls—Priscilla plus nineteen of the girls she was freed with, alongside the group of eighty-two released just a few months earlier in May and Amina Ali Nkeki, Maryam Ali Maiyanga, and Rakiya Abubakar (the three girls who escaped with babies)—all headed to the American University of Nigeria (AUN) in Yola. Only one girl, Deborah, baby Amos’s mother, refused to return to school, choosing to return to her husband and family instead. This private institution, founded by Atiku Abubakar, a former Nigerian vice-president, in partnership with the American University in Washington, DC, is their home for the foreseeable future. They are enrolled in the New Foundation School (NFS) Chibok Education Initiative—a university preparatory program specially designed for the Chibok girls. Their school fees and a monthly allowance is paid by the Nigerian federal government. The program was actually established in August 2014 with eleven students who escaped in the immediate aftermath of the mass abduction that April night and rose to twenty-four escaped students by the end of 2014. The New Foundation School academic courses include twelve subjects—English, math, business studies, basic technology, civic education, biology, physics, chemistry, agricultural science, social studies, and computer studies, according to school officials. This is paired with extracurricular activities such as singing, dancing, drama, yoga, and an array of competitions in spelling, debate, and public speaking, all designed to help students “discover their talents, voices, literacy, leadership and critical thinking.” Given the trauma Priscilla and her schoolmates have suffered, each one of them is also part of a psychological health support program. They live together on campus, separate from the rest of the AUN students, and they head home during the Christmas and summer breaks. For Esther, seeing these girls advance toward a dream she’d long held for her Dorcas was gut wrenching. She still imagines a future for her baby. Except these days, with images of a dark-veiled Dorcas rooted in her thoughts, dreams of college no longer shine quite as brightly as they once did.
For Bring Back Our Girls’ Aisha Yesufu, one of the cruelest parts of this sprawling tragedy has been the Buhari administration’s “victimization” of outspoken parents like Esther. The government, angered by Esther’s public calls to rescue Dorcas, sent her a warning. “If you have anything to do with BBOG, we will not bring back your daughter.” Initially Esther dismissed the words. But as the years went by and Dorcas remained lost even as other parents were reunited with their girls, Aisha watched Esther slowly internalize the threat. Aisha visited the Yakubu home on June 8, 2018, the day Dorcas turned twenty in Boko Haram captivity. By then, Esther had fully internalized the guilt. “It is my fault my baby is still not back,” she told Aisha.
Aisha has watched grief consume not only Esther, but also countless other Chibok families, moving like a disease through the community. Chibok, in northeastern Nigeria, is located in perhaps the most educationally regressive region in the country. In this part of the world, the girls who make it into school and manage to keep going do so, more often than not, because of their mothers. Women fight and cajole fathers to allow their daughters to have a decent shot at life and an education. When the 219 Chibok girls disappeared in the middle of the night, many of those fathers turned to their wives with accusatory looks. In some cases, they said without hesitation, “This is your fault.” As a result, blame and guilt have moved through Chibok with a destructive force, leaving heartbroken mothers struggling to find their footing in shattered families.
In this landscape of fear, pain, and brokenness, Aisha Yesufu and others from Bring Back Our Girls remain committed to fighting until Dorcas and every one of the 111 other girls have been accounted for.
“The rescue of the Chibok girls is not a privilege. It is their right as enshrined in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. We want all our girls to be accounted for so we can move on with our lives.” Time and again, Aisha spoke with her trademark passion.
Meanwhile the Buhari government’s animosity toward the Bring Back Our Girls movement remains as intense as ever. Upon the release of the twenty-one Chibok girls in October 2016 and the group of eighty-two in May 2017, no active members of BBOG were invited to any of the state-run events marking those joyous occasions. To this day, Aisha Yesufu still has not met a single one of the freed girls for whom she and the other members of BBOG have tirelessly fought.
She remains unfazed.
When the Nigerian military announced on January 4, 2018, that Salomi Pogu, another missing Chibok girl, had been found in northeastern Borno, bringing the total number of freed schoolgirls to 107, Aisha and the rest of Bring Back Our Girls promptly thanked the troops for their actions. But BBOG refuses to turn its gaze away from the 112 girls still in captivity.
The Buhari government, for its part, maintains that it is committed to securing the girls’ release. According to a presidential statement released by his spokesman on April 14, 2018, the fourth anniversary of the Chibok abductions:
“This government it is not relenting. We will continue to persist, and the parents should please not give up. Don’t give up hope of seeing our daughters back home again. Don’t lose faith in this government’s ability to fulfil our promise of reuniting you with your daughters. Don’t imagine for a moment that we have forgotten about our daughters or that we consider their freedom a lost cause.”
The truth is, though, that there is little to indicate the Buhari government is being driven by a sense of urgency to end the nightmare for these girls and their families. President Buhari acknowledged in that same statement that efforts have stalled, saying, “Unfortunately, the negotiations between the government and Boko Haram suffered some unexpected setbacks, owing mainly to a lack of agreement among their abductors, whose internal differences have led to a divergence of voices regarding the outcome of the talks.”
Bring Back Our Girls’ marches, sit-ins, media interviews, and public advocacy for the lost Chibok girls went on, even as the first prosecutions in relation to the mass kidnapping were secured in 2018. Haruna Yahaya and Banzana Yusuf, two abductors who were both swept up in Nigerian military operations, were brought up before a special court established to try hundreds of Boko Haram suspects. The thirty-five-year-old Yahaya admitted his involvement in the mass kidnapping and was given two fifteen-year jail sentences. Yusuf, whose age is unknown, received a twenty-year sentence for “planning and kidnapping” the girls.
In fact, BBOG’s focus has expanded, and the group has become a voice for the easily marginalized girl in Nigeria. When a Boko Haram faction kidnapped 112 schoolgirls between the ages of eleven and nineteen from the Government Girls’ Science and Techn
ical College and one boy from the town of Dapchi on February 19, 2018, the movement took up the cry and mounted a public pressure campaign for their safe return, which happened a couple of weeks later, on March 21, 2018. The release of the Dapchi schoolgirl Leah Sharibu, the only Christian among them and the sole abductee still in captivity at the time of this writing in 2018 (reportedly because of her ongoing refusal to convert to Islam), is now a another key BBOG demand.
That’s not to say that the movement’s public advocacy hasn’t taken a toll on Aisha and many of the other members, like cofounder Oby Ezekwesili. It has, greatly. Unlike Oby, before the events in Chibok, Aisha Yesufu was unknown to most Nigerians. Back then, she made a quiet living from her business interests and focused the rest of her energies on caring for her husband and children. These days her trademark red hijab and soul-stirring speeches at the Unity Fountain have made her one of the country’s most recognizable and polarizing public figures. This notoriety is unwelcomed by Aliyyah, who’s made no secret of her displeasure.
“Mummy, since the Chibok girls, you have changed,” Aisha’s daughter said to her. “You used to be more fun and now you worry so much. I can’t wait for the Chibok girls to be back, so I can have my mummy back.” Aliyyah’s words haven’t lost their power to sting, but the fight for the Chibok girls isn’t one she feels she can ever abandon.
“Even if it takes twenty years of my life, I am ready to give it to Chibok because if I give up on the Chibok girls, it means I have given up on the little girl who was crying to be educated.”
By the time I saw Priscilla again, it was August 2018. She was twenty-one years old and nine months had passed since our last interview. I flew to Abuja to spend a week with her, Bernice, and Azizat, their school-dorm mother, with the hope of asking the handful of outstanding questions I needed answered before I could finish this book. When we met on the first day, I found myself speechless for a minute or two while we sat in my hotel room. Priscilla, Bernice, and Azizat occupied the room’s three armchairs by the windows, leaving me to sit on the twin bed, closest to them. The changes in Priscilla were impossible to ignore. Her makeup and jewelry were bolder, and though her clothing remained modest, here too I noticed things had shifted. The neckline of her blouse sat a little more off the shoulders, quietly signaling a young woman’s growing physical confidence. But by far the biggest change of all was her grasp of English, which I grew more impressed with as the week went on. Bernice too was evolving and sported similar changes in appearance, though when she spoke English there was still a hint of uncertainty as she expressed herself. I made a comment about how much they’d changed, both grinned back at me, giggling happily with a mix of self-consciousness and pride.
I found myself wanting to stomp my feet and cheer for the power of education to transform, for its ability to refashion a girl like Priscilla into an Aisha Yesufu or my own mother. At some point when I hadn’t been paying attention, Priscilla had shed the “Chibok girl” moniker and eased into becoming a young woman. I couldn’t help but smile when I pictured the shy, nervous girl she had been during my last visit to the American University in November 2017. Back then she’d tenderly cradled the chocolate cupcake I’d handed her, refusing to eat it in my presence. Now in my hotel room, she sat cradling a cell phone, scrolling through its contents, opening and closing its case.
We methodically worked through my list of questions, with Priscilla confirming and expanding on elements she’d shared in past interviews. This was the first time I’d spoken to Bernice in depth. Back in December 2016, when I traveled home to Chibok with them, she’d pointedly refused to answer or even acknowledge my questions. Now, as Priscilla sank deeper into her memories, Bernice nudged her toward more details and greater clarity. At certain points, while they were speaking about what they’d endured in the forest, they both twisted and flopped backward and forward in the hotel armchairs, as if physically wrestling with memories they were reluctant to share with another who hadn’t been with them in the forest underneath that giant tree, or in the house in Gwoza where they’d faced constant pressure to marry their captors. In these moments, I repeatedly asked if they wanted to stop and take a break. Priscilla always said no with a faraway look in her eyes.
Midweek I returned to a question we’d talked about before: “How did it feel to know you were finally heading home?” In an earlier interview, Priscilla’s answer had been a brief mishmash about joy and faith. This time around, though, she said nothing. Her body slumped forward so that I couldn’t see her face clearly. The room fell into silence. I looked over at their chaperone, Azizat.
“Priscilla, are you okay?” I called out softly.
“Priscilla, what’s wrong?” asked Azizat.
Priscilla’s head remained bowed and she stayed silent. It was only when she raised her hand up to her face that I knew she was crying. In an instant I felt sick to my stomach and guilty. I’d upset her. I’d done the one thing I promised never to do. Within seconds I was off the bed, sitting at her feet and looking up at Priscilla.
I tried to make her tears stop.
“Everything is okay. You made it. You’re okay. You’re free.”
The tears still fell.
I didn’t see Bernice get up, but suddenly she was standing by Priscilla’s side, while I remained on the floor. I looked over at Azizat, who was intently watching the scene with a knowing look on her face. I was a little puzzled at first, but soon understood.
Within seconds, Bernice was comforting her best friend in their native Kibaku, forcefully drying her tears. Without warning, Bernice pulled the scarf from her best friend’s head. This last action made the crying young woman yell out in frustration. Clearly enjoying herself, Bernice slapped Priscilla’s hands away and laughed, while she strained in vain to snatch back her head covering.
In that instant, a window opened, and I saw them together in the forest, huddled under that grand tamarind tree. They’d been each other’s mother, sister, and best friend, sharing whatever they had and caring for one another during bouts of illness or when despair threatened to take over. I grew emotional watching Bernice ease Priscilla’s distress in a hotel room in Abuja, though I didn’t understand her words. I could tell from her tone and the look on her face that she was tenderly chiding Priscilla, who was still trying unsuccessfully to break free from Bernice’s efforts to wrap the sheath of fabric around her best friend’s head.
During our eighteen months of conversations I’d never before seen Priscilla cry. I’d often thought the strength she projected seemed almost superhuman. I accepted it when I thought of the deep, abiding faith that had seen her through. But now, for first time, I began to make out her hidden wounds.
Within fifteen minutes the tears were gone. I was perched on the bed, Bernice was back in her armchair, and Azizat now had an “I told you so” look on her smiling face. Bernice had wound the fabric around her best friend’s head to create an elegant wrap, the folds of cloth reminiscent of petals. The new creation Priscilla sported was the only outward sign something had been disturbed within her. Calm returned to the room, and I asked a question I continued to be puzzled by.
“Have you forgiven the boys who took you?”
“Yes, always,” said Priscilla matter-of-factly with a genuine smile. “There isn’t any three days that I don’t pray for them.”
“Pray for them for what?” I was incredulous.
“For them to repent on what they’re doing. Maybe they don’t understand what they are doing, that’s why. Because they say what they do is worshipping God and they say killing people is good to God. So we say these people don’t know what they are doing.”
“And you pray for God to show them?”
“Yes.”
I looked over at Bernice, who nodded in agreement. “I forgave them on the first day,” Bernice said.
They could tell I was confused. I have struggled to understand the wholesale forgiveness of hundreds of men who stole them from their school, then beat, star
ved, and terrorized them for months on end. I stared at their faces, searching for any hint of insincerity, but there was none to be found. I looked over at the clock sitting on the table between the twin beds. It was already past four p.m., which meant I was running very late. This was the girls’ last day in Abuja, and I’d promised to be finished by three so they could drive around the city and take in the sights. Priscilla was getting restless, groaning and starting to roll her eyes. I pushed on with my last few questions.
“Do you want to travel? Do you have any interest in going abroad?”
Priscilla perked up. “You know, when we were released, there was one place that me and Bernice made a promise, here in Abuja, that by God’s grace in life, we will be there . . . one day . . .” Then she suddenly paused.
“Where?” I asked. London or New York? What excited these two?
Priscilla and Bernice looked at each other and giggled uncontrollably before shouting in unison, “Jerusalem!”
It made perfect sense. Both girls were lovers of the Bible; I understood how they’d arrived at the point of wanting to visit the very place they read about almost daily.
“I knew you would say Jerusalem!” Azizat shouted gleefully. “They are completely fascinated by the place, its history, and want to experience it.”
Their attention was waning. I asked quickly about their futures, schooling, and marriage. Shrieks filled the room. They told me adamantly that they weren’t interested in marriage any time soon, especially after seeing the girls who had married their captors and then instantly regretted it. Bernice dreamed of being a doctor, the same dream Priscilla once had. But for Priscilla, more had shifted within her than I’d realized. She didn’t know what career path she desired at that moment, only that she wanted to be “a somebody” and a good person.
I hugged them tightly when it was finally time to say goodbye. Both Priscilla and Bernice are at least a head taller than me, but I felt protective of them. There were selfies and more hugs, and then they were off to find early-evening fun in Abuja.