‘We will save you’: how Boko Haram tricked and kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria

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A watchman opens the gate of the deserted Government Girls Technical College, where 110 girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram Islamists at Dapchi town in northern Nigerian on February 28, 2018. Nigeria's government on March 1 said it had set up a committee to establish how Boko Haram jihadists managed to kidnap 110 girls from their school in the country's remote northeast. Photo: AFP

Published: 5:10am, 9 Mar 2018Updated: 9:34pm, 9 Mar 2018

Evening was falling and hundreds of students were preparing to break the fast observed every Monday at the girls’ boarding school in the small Nigerian town of Dapchi.

Watching them get ready to eat reminded Usman Mohammed, a school security guard, that it was time for his evening prayers. It was a school night like any other. Until suddenly it wasn’t.

“The food had just been served when we started hearing gunshots,” he said. He rushed to see what was happening. Girls were running in all directions. He could see strange men in army uniforms, carrying weapons. There were vehicles painted in military colours, with machine guns mounted on their roofs. But if you looked closer, you saw that “Allah is great” had been inscribed in Arabic on their bonnets.

“We immediately knew that these weren’t soldiers,” Mohammed said. “They surrounded the school and were shooting, even on the main road they were shooting.”

Policemen stand on guard at the premises of Government Girls Technical College, where 110 girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram Islamists at Dapchi town in northern Nigerian on February 28, 2018. Photo: AFP

The strangers were trying to round up the girls. He remembered them shouting: “Stop, stop! We are not Boko Haram! We are soldiers, get into our vehicles. We will save you.”