“They sang hymns in front of their guards, quietly at first, then more boldly. Most of the kidnapped students were Christians. They wrote down their favorite Bible verses and prayers in their diaries.” Mayeni Jones, BBC News
03/12/2021 Nigeria (International Christian Concern) – BBC News recently sat down with Naomi Adamu, one of the 270 girls from the Chibok Government Secondary School who was kidnapped by Boko Haram in April 2014. Adamu’s revelations, compiled with interviews of several other Chibok survivors, have been made into a new book titled Bring Back Our Girls by Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw.
“The book explores the girls’ time in captivity in detail and shows how the social media campaign that made them famous also made it harder to secure their release.” Writes Mayeni Jones of BBC, “Their fame had made them precious commodities, too valuable to let go.”
Naomi was 24 years old at the time of her kidnapping and detailed the difficulties she faced throughout three years in Boko Haram Captivity: “It was a very difficult time for us in Sambisa, there was no food, no water. We even had to use soil to clean ourselves up when we were on our periods.”
Naomi was amongst the oldest of the kidnapped girls and recalled the pressure militants put on her to marry a fighter or convert to Islam, with hopes that the younger girls would follow her lead. “Every time she refused she would be beaten brutally and threatened with death,” relayed BBC.
“When the militants kept her and some of the more stubborn students apart from their peers, depriving the weaker girls of food in order to force them to marry, Naomi and her friends smuggled food to them.” Wrote Mayeni Jones of BBC News,“They sang hymns in front of their guards, quietly at first, then more boldly. Most of the kidnapped students were Christians. They wrote down their favorite Bible verses and prayers in their diaries.”
Naomi was freed in 2017 and while she is now happily married and expecting her first child, the news of recent school kidnappings initiates deep-seated empathy: “I could not sleep throughout the night when I heard about the Zamfara abductions because I didn’t want them to go through what we went through. I still get scared whenever I hear gunshots – even if they’re from the military.”
Please continue to pray for the survivors of kidnappings, that the Lord will heal their trauma and give them peace beyond understanding. Pray for the safe return of all who have been abducted, for the Lord to comfort grieving parents and families, and for the protection of schools from violent attacks. Please also pray for the perpetrators of these attacks, that they will be granted true repentance and accept Jesus as their savior.
For interviews please contact Alison Garcia at press@persecution.org
