By Ayodele Oni
Despite being stopped from her education and cut off from her parents for over 12 years, one of the abducted Chibok girls in Borno State, that recently escaped from her abductors, Jinkai Yama’ s ambition remains to reunite with her parents and continue with her education.
Report revealed that the Nigerian Army facilitated her recovery.
Taken from her dormitory in Chibok in April 2014, the girl who was abducted at 14 has walked out of Boko Haram captivity — now 26, a mother of two and forcefully married to eight terrorists.
She did not escape alone. Another Chibok girl escaped with her, also holding children in her arms.
US-based human rights lawyer, Emmanuel Ogebe, who has campaigned for the Chibok girls for a decade, disclosed the escape.
“Jinkai Yama’s escape 12 and a half years after the 2014 atrocity is a triumph of hope and the human spirit over terror, evil and despair,” Ogebe said in an email.
In 12 years, she said she was passed between fighters and forced into marriage with eight different Boko Haram terrorists.
Her two children, born in captivity, are the only evidence of a childhood that was stolen from her.
She named Gwoza in Borno State — a known insurgent stronghold — as where her last “husband” is based.
Through it all, one hope kept her alive: seeing her parents again.Ogebe said. Yama has not yet spoken to her family.
She does not know whether her parents survived the 12 years she was missing. But she keeps asking about them. And she wants their permission to return to school.
Her escape, Ogebe said, destroys the claim that the girls did not want to come home.
“Jinkai’s escape debunks spurious claims that the girls do not wish to return.
“The very fact that Jinkai and others are still escaping a dozen years later disproves claims that they never wanted to return. ”Yama’s freedom comes just days after another Chibok girl, Deborah Ishaya, got married in the United States.
Ishaya was among the girls Ogebe relocated to America. She escaped early, became the first Chibok girl to graduate from an American high school in 2017 with honours, and went on to university.
“Four of the girls taken to the US have now earned degrees — some with Masters — and have married on their own terms.
“It is the same abduction, but two very different lives. One girl was given a chance. The other was forced to survive eight forced marriages.”
Ogebe also rejected the claim in a 2023 book that the CIA found 30 girls in Sambisa, but some chose to stay because they had children for fighters.
He described it as false, noting that the largest recoveries were 21 girls in 2016 and 82 in 2017 — never 30 at once.
“After more than 4,500 days in darkness, Yama chose freedom. She chose to walk — with two babies and a future she still believes she can have. .
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