Watch: Boko Haram Survivor Tells the Story of Her Escape

Just over two years after narrowly escaping off the back of a truck to freedom in the middle of the night, a Nigerian schoolgirl who was kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014 says that she still has hope for the future of her country and her classmates.

“I have had dreams. With what I have been through, some of the dreams are scary. But now my dreams are good,” ‘Sa’a’ (a pseudonym used for protection), told congressmen at a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights. I have a dream of a safe Nigeria; a Nigeria where girls can go to school without fear of being kidnapped; a Nigeria where girls like me are not made into suicide bombers and little boys are not routinely stolen and turned into terrorists.”

You can watch her full testimony here.

Below are excerpts from Sa’a’s submitted written testimony:

I am one of the 276 Schoolgirls who was kidnapped from the Government Secondary School in Chibok by the terror group Boko Haram. Sa’a is not my real name. It is a name that I use for my protection.

Before attending the Chibok Secondary school, I also survived an earlier Boko Haram attack at my former high school. After I escaped from that school invasion, my parents decided to move me to the Chibok Secondary School because they thought that it would be a safer place nearer home for me to continue my education.

However, on the 14th of April 2014, the Boko Haram came to my school at Chibok when we were all sleeping at night. They were shooting guns and yelling. They were yelling, “Allahu Akbar.” Everyone woke up, and came out of their rooms. We were wearing our pajamas when they came in. They asked us, “Where are the boys?” The boys are day students. The boys usually came to school in the morning but went home after school. They also asked us where the food was kept. They pointed out two girls to show them where the food store was and took it in a truck. Then they made us move from where we were staying to the class area. Next, they started burning everything – our clothes, our books, our classrooms – everything in our school.

They marched us out of the school for miles to where their trucks were. Then they asked us to enter the trucks and said that if we did not, they were going to shoot all of us. We were all scared, so we entered the trucks. They started driving us through the forest. When we were all riding in the trucks through the forest, I just had this feeling I should try to escape because I don’t know where I’m going and neither do my parents. I said to one of my friends that “I’m going to jump out of the truck. I would rather die so my parents will see my body and bury it than to go with the Boko Haram.”

So my friend said, “OK.” She would jump out with me. I jumped out first, and she jumped after me. We hid in the forest while the cars passed. We were in the forest that night without knowing what to do. It was very dark. We didn’t know where we were. My friend injured both of her legs from jumping. She couldn’t walk. We just sat under a tree until morning. She cried. She said that I should go home and let her die in the forest. I said, “No. If we are going to die, we are going to die together. I won’t leave you here.”

I decided to go and look for help in forest. I was going around not far from where we slept, and I found a Fulani man – a shepherd. I asked him for help, but he said, “No, I can’t help you.” So I tried to convince him. Then he did help us. He put my friend on his bicycle and took us to Chibok, and that’s how we got home.

Before I got home in the morning, my parents heard what happened in my school and one of my brothers and his friend went back to Chibok to find out what happened. When I got home, my mom, my dad, and my family, everyone was crying. Our neighbors came to the house. They were all happy and crying because I’m home, but they were asking about the other girls. There was a man who came to my home. He was asking about his daughters. I told him we managed to escape, but I didn’t know if his daughters would manage to escape the way we did. I didn’t know what happened next after we jumped out of the truck…

Recently I saw the video of some of my classmates that were missing for two years now. I am glad to see that some of them are alive. The moment I saw them and recognized their faces, I started crying, with tears of joy coming rolling down from my eyes, thanking God for their lives. Seeing them has given me more courage not to give up. Seeing them gives me the courage to tell the world today that we should not lose hope.

Boko Haram, now also known as The Islamic State in West Africa, is now considered the deadliest terror organization in the world, with a deal toll surpassing that of ISIS. According to a report at the International Business Times, the group, which is primarily organized in and around northeastern Nigeria, has killed roughly 20,000 people and displaced over 2 million others since 2009.

More than two years have passed since the “Chibok girls” were kidnapped by Boko Haram in a nighttime raid on their northern Nigerian Boarding school April 2014. Despite efforts by the Nigerian government, 219 of them still remain missing. According to another IB Times story, Andrew Pocock, the former British High Commissioner to Nigeria, revealed in a March interview that both the U.S. and U.K. knew about the location of at least 80 of the kidnapped girls, but declined to enact rescue operations for them because it was deemed “too risky.”

“A couple of months after the kidnapping, flybys and an American eye in the sky spotted a group of up to 80 girls in a particular spot in the Sambisa forest, around a very large tree, called locally the Tree of Life, along with evidence of vehicular movement and a large encampment,” Pocock diplomat told a British newspaper. “A land-based attack would have been seen coming miles away and the girls killed. An air-based rescue, such as flying in helicopters or Hercules, would have required large numbers and meant a significant risk to the rescuers and even more so to the girls.”

When asked about the statement, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department responded:

“The United States continues to support actively the efforts to locate and bring home the Chibok girls along with other kidnapped victims of Boko Haram’s acts of terrorism. The search for the kidnapped schoolgirls is ongoing. While the Nigerian government maintains its lead role, the United States continues to lend its unique assets and capabilities to assist in the search.”

Video released by CNN last month and reportedly filmed in December seems to show at least fifteen of the girls alive with “no obvious signs of maltreatment.”

However, once the girls return home, things do not necessarily return to normal for them.

“Young girls and women who have been raped, but released, by Boko Haram face extreme stigmatization from their communities where many label them as ‘Boko Haram wives. and fear that they have been radicalized and will be potential attackers,” testified former Congressman Frank Wolf, who is now Distinguished Senior Fellow at the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative at the same hearing.

“They’re victims twice. They’re victims when they’re captured and they’re victims when they’re released.” (For more from the author of “Watch: Boko Haram Survivor Tells the Story of Her Escape” please click HERE)

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