A former captive who successfully escaped from the Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram in December said that the Chibok schoolgirls abducted last year frequently discussed escaping the militants.
Liatu Andrawus, a 23-year-old mother of two children, told The Globe and Mail that she met the hundreds of captured schoolgirls while she was being held in captivity in the northeastern Nigerian town of Gwoza.
The schoolgirls were kidnapped from the town of Chibok a year ago by the extremist group, which has waged a sustained six-year insurgency against the Nigerian government in the hopes of carving out an Islamic caliphate in the northeastern regions of Nigeria.
Ms Andrawus revealed that she and some of the Chibok schoolgirls frequently gathered together to pray and to comfort each other. The former captive also revealed that they often talked about how to flee from the militant group when they were not being forced into studies of the Koran.
"We always talked about how we could escape. Sometimes we sat down and prayed together and hugged and cried. They were remembering their good moments with their parents and loved ones," Ms Andrawus recalled to the Globe and Mail.
She also revealed that some of the schoolgirls she met were forcibly married to Boko Haram fighters, although some of the group had not yet been given away as "brides" when she met them in Gwoza.
Ms Andrawus also said that these unmarried schoolgirls were kept in a compound that previously belonged to a politician who fled before the militants captured the town in August.
International Christian Concern's Africa analyst Cameron Thomas had told WND previously that its sources indicated some of the schoolgirls were sold as child brides "for as little as $12."
According to the Globe and Mail, Ms Andrawus escaped captivity when she was allowed to visit her mother in a nearby town. She took her children and her mother one night to a Cameroonian town 20 kilometres away, from which they were able to travel safely back to Abuja in Nigeria.
