Boko Haram’s mass abduction was an accident, Chibok girls’ diaries reveal
Abuja — The mass abduction of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls from Chibok — the biggest publicity coup of Boko Haram’s jihadist insurgency — was the accidental outcome of a botched robbery, say the girls who spent three years in their brutal captivity. The Chibok girls made the surprise revelation in secret diaries they kept while held prisoner and a copy of which has been exclusively obtained by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Recalling the night of their kidnapping in April 2014, Naomi Adamu described in the diaries how Boko Haram had not come to the school in Chibok to abduct the girls, but rather to steal machinery for house building. Unable to find what they were looking for, the militants were unsure what to do with the girls. Arguments swiftly ensued. "One boy said they should burn us all, and they [some of the other fighters] said: ‘No, let us take them with us to Sambisa [Boko Haram’s remote forest base] … if we take them to Shekau [the group’s leader], he will know what...
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