“We went through hell to survive” –Escape Chibok School Girls Narrate Ordeal! Part 3 Without displaying any revolutionary mien, Comfort explained why she decided to opt for a life of championing the cause of female members of the society. “I have decided that, just like the Pakistani Malala Yousafzai, I am 17 years, and will devote the rest of my life to help my fellow womenfolk because the other girls and I were inside the forest together but I just had the opportunity to come out. Others didn’t have the opportunity; only a few of us did. “So I have made up my mind to speak out against practices against the women and the silent girls who are still languishing in the forest at the mercy of a militant group, so that people will hear and come out like I did. Malala also had a similar experience and she came out,” Comfort boasted, vowing that she hopes to proceed to read law. She maintained that the only way for the several imbalances in this country would reduced is for people to come out to speak against them, noting “I want to talk on behalf of the girls so that people will hear and bring the girls out.” What does she think was the aim of the Boko Haram for abducting the girls? Her reply: “The Boko Haram said education is not good for girls. They should go and get married. They told us there in the forest that it was an error for us to go to school instead of matrimonial homes. They also wanted us to convert to Islam. “Majority of the girls in our school are Christians. Only a few of us are Muslims. They took us there with the aim of converting us to Islam after which they would marry out”. Asked if she had heard anything from her friends still in the forest; her answer was in the negative, pointing out that nobody has been able to contact them. Does she know if the girls remaining in the forest are being molested? She was not in a position to know. “There are so many stories going around but I cannot tell since I have no communication with them. And none of them has escaped since then besides the eight of us who managed to escape”. During the journey to the forest, were they being fed? She disclosed that the insurgents gave them bread, milk and malt once but they refused to eat because they were crying. “The men were calling us idols and all sorts of names. They said their aim was to stop us from going to school”, she stated. Comfort also confirmed that there were no less than 350 girls in the school that night, saying, however, that some of them ran away when the men entered the school. Were there no teachers living in the school compound, our correspondent asked. “There are teachers living in the school but they all ran away. So there was no form of protection at all. They burnt the school completely,” she said. Do they still want to go to school? The four girls chorused their desire to return to school as soon as possible. Rejoice Yabia and Rahab Yaya would like to read medicine; Comfort is interested in the legal profession while Saratu Isa would settle for teaching.
Posted on: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 04:08:07 +0000
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