“If she hadn’t shouted that, we would have all escaped,” Ms. Dauda said in a series of interviews this past week in the city of Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram’s violent insurgency.
Today, kidnapping — including of large groups of children — has become a business across the West African country, with ransom payments the main motivation.
The Chibok Girls are only the most prominent victims of a 15-year conflict with Islamist militants which, despite the hundreds of thousands of people killed and millions uprooted, has largely been forgotten amid other wars.
For months after being captured, Ms. Dauda said, the girls slept outside in the Sambisa forest, Boko Haram’s hide-out, listened to a steady stream of Islamic preachers and fought over limited water supplies.
Although she was still a hostage of Boko Haram’s murderous leader, Abubakar Shekau, and his henchmen, she said that they were given everything they needed, surrounded by people “who cared about each other like a family,” and that she was happy.
When Boko Haram’s leader died and its powerful offshoot, Islamic State West Africa Province, took over in the Sambisa forest, Ms. Dauda and her husband found themselves on the wrong side, she said, and under suspicion.
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