A Nigerian schoolgirl, Victoria Yohanna, was invited by the House of Lords, the second chamber of UK Parliament, to narrate her terrifying ordeal during one of the biggest ever mass abductions carried out by the Boko Haram sect.
October 13, Victoria, who managed to escape, will recount her experiences to an audience at the House of Lords. The event will mark the launch of a major new report on the persecution of Christians worldwide, which has been compiled by the charity Aid to the Church in Need.
It is the first time when one of Boko Haram’s thousands of schoolgirl victims has travelled to the UK to narrate her horrible ordeal.
Speaking to journalists ahead of the report’s launch, Victoria told how she was abducted along with her mother and five siblings when insurgents attacked her hometown just after New Year.
“We heard shooting and the sound of bombs in the early hours of the morning, and at first I thought it was the Nigerian army trying to protect us. Then I realised it was Boko Haram. Those Boko Haram members whose duty is to take women and children for their caliphate took our entire family and made us walk on foot to one of their camps,” she said.
Victoria recalled that en route she saw numerous corpses of people who had been killed and beheaded by terrorists.
Then she spent two weeks at a Boko Haram camp in the outskirts of Baga.
“Every morning they took the hostages for training at Islamic school. They would say the Koran is the religion God had for you,” she added.
The girl revealed that she was able to fool the militants into thinking she was a Muslim by pretending to perform the “buta”. Although there were Muslim captives among the hostages who knew she was a Christian, they did not give her away.
One night, when terrorists went out to kidnap more people, Victoria and the rest of her family managed to escape from the camp.
“I knew what had happened to the Chibok schoolgirls and was very scared. Were it not for God we would probably all be dead by now,” she said.
He recalled that when he met the girl for the first time, she found it impossible to narrate her ordeal without breaking down in tears.
“The church has been trying to organise counselling sessions for these victims of Boko Haram. Simply offering them confessional is not enough,” he noted.
Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari has recently hosted the United Kingdom’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Nicholas Houghton. The president told the top security chief that Nigeria still needs more support from the British government in its quest to defeat the terrorists.
According to The Telegraph, a 15-year-old girl was one of more than 400 people abducted by the terrorists during an attack on the north-east Nigerian town of Baga in January.
October 13, Victoria, who managed to escape, will recount her experiences to an audience at the House of Lords. The event will mark the launch of a major new report on the persecution of Christians worldwide, which has been compiled by the charity Aid to the Church in Need.
It is the first time when one of Boko Haram’s thousands of schoolgirl victims has travelled to the UK to narrate her horrible ordeal.
Speaking to journalists ahead of the report’s launch, Victoria told how she was abducted along with her mother and five siblings when insurgents attacked her hometown just after New Year.
“We heard shooting and the sound of bombs in the early hours of the morning, and at first I thought it was the Nigerian army trying to protect us. Then I realised it was Boko Haram. Those Boko Haram members whose duty is to take women and children for their caliphate took our entire family and made us walk on foot to one of their camps,” she said.
Victoria recalled that en route she saw numerous corpses of people who had been killed and beheaded by terrorists.
Then she spent two weeks at a Boko Haram camp in the outskirts of Baga.
“Every morning they took the hostages for training at Islamic school. They would say the Koran is the religion God had for you,” she added.
The girl revealed that she was able to fool the militants into thinking she was a Muslim by pretending to perform the “buta”. Although there were Muslim captives among the hostages who knew she was a Christian, they did not give her away.
One night, when terrorists went out to kidnap more people, Victoria and the rest of her family managed to escape from the camp.
“I knew what had happened to the Chibok schoolgirls and was very scared. Were it not for God we would probably all be dead by now,” she said.
Victoria has been accompanied to the UK by Father Gideon Obasogie, a priest from Maiduguri, where she is now living.
He recalled that when he met the girl for the first time, she found it impossible to narrate her ordeal without breaking down in tears.
“The church has been trying to organise counselling sessions for these victims of Boko Haram. Simply offering them confessional is not enough,” he noted.
Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari has recently hosted the United Kingdom’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Nicholas Houghton. The president told the top security chief that Nigeria still needs more support from the British government in its quest to defeat the terrorists.
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