A close friend and classmate of captive heroine Christian schoolgirl Leah Sharibu was kidnapped five years after the Dapchi school mass abductions.
“Ladidi ” (real name withheld for security reasons) was among the 105 girls initially reported abducted on February 19, 2018, by terrorist group ISWA, our records show. However unlike Leah, Ladidi was able to escape in the process, making Leah the only Christian student captured by the terrorists.
Our investigation reveals that her father then evacuated her to north central Nigeria to continue her education in safety.
However after obtaining admission to a tertiary institution in the northeast, she relocated again to a neighboring state with less insecurity concerns.
Ironically, however Ladidi was subsequently drugged and forcefully converted to Islam, not by Boko Haram terrorists but by her Muslim schoolmates including a head of department at her school.
The fact that Leah’s best friend was herself abducted in purportedly a safer school, on the 5th anniversary of the Dapchi abductions is indicative of the continuing precarious condition for women in Nigeria.
Incidentally, at a service marking Leah’s 5th anniversary in Abuja recently, international human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe said he was tipped off that the Dapchi girls would be returned and
“exactly 1 month after the abduction the Muslim girls were returned but Leah was not.
What does that tell you?
That this is predictable, the people who are doing this are known and every month in Northern Nigeria Christian girls are abducted; not by terrorists alone but by their own Muslim neighbors.
And even in the same village, you can see your daughter but cannot have access to her. That happened to Habiba in Katsina in 2016 and till today she has not come back. They even brought her to NTA here in Abuja and showed her and took her back and the father could not see his daughter till today.”