Agony of an escapee

Agonies Of Escapee
Schoolgirl: How I Wish
My Colleagues Joined
Me In Fleeing’ Kareem Haruna — May 22, 2014 One of the Chibok schoolgirls, Sarah
Lawan, who escaped from captivity on
the second day Boko Haram abducted
them said she still wished her colleagues
in detention had summoned her kind of
courage to flee from their abductors. Sarah who is 19 years old said she gets
more traumatized each time she bumps
into the grieving parents of her school
mates that are still in the captivity of the
Boko Haram. “Each time I see the parents of my
friends and classmates moving around in
town with long faces, I feel sad, I feel
like weeping again and I wished they
agreed to run with us when we got the
chance to run”, Sarah, who spoke with LEADERSHIP on phone, said. The lucky
Chibok girl said most of the abducted
girls were terrified by the threat warning
made to them by the Boko Haram
gunmen while they were being taken
away. “They told us that they are taking us
somewhere safer, but warned that if any
one of us dare tried to runaway they
would shoot at us and kill us. So
everyone was scared of disobeying their
orders; even when I saw the opportunity to run”, said Sarah. “We were driven on many trucks for
hours to a point where we were told to go
down the trucks; it was at that point,
after I observed that the men that
abducted us were not paying attention to
us that I whispered to some of us to run, but many were scared because of the
earlier warning; I was terrified as well  but
I and one other girl, summoned courage
and snuck out and we began to run. We
ran for hours until we got to where we
saw people we could trust who later assisted us to get to Chibok”. Sarah wants the federal government and
the Nigeria security forces to quickly
rescue the girls, as she said she is not
comfortable with the fact that the girls
are still in the custody of the abductions. “Everyday I wake up with the hope that
my friends would be rescued; everyday
we keep looking towards the direction of
the road leading into Chibok to see if the
girls would be brought in; but everyday
our hopes are dampened when the night comes and none of them come home.
The federal government and our soldiers
must do everything to rescue them
because I am always scared each time I
remember the girls are with those men;
they don’t look kind or gentle, they are not nice people to be with; I fear they
don’t harm them”, said Sarah in broken
voice. The girl said she is not aware if American
soldiers have arrived Sambisa or if any
of them have commenced searching for
her friends. “I don’t know if there are soldiers from
America, but I see some few soldiers in
CHIBOK, who are just doing nothing
serious that I can say will help bring my
friends back. I heard that hunters are in
Maiduguri and they want to go and search for my school mates; I plead with
government to allow them go since they
are hunters, I believe they have the
ability to rescue the girls; we have seen
and heard how they arrest Boko Haram
members and hand them over to the soldiers”, said Sarah