|
Nigerian teen: Terrorists attacked her school twice
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · March 19, 2015
A 16-year-old Christian girl trying to get an education in northern Nigeria, Esther Bila was exactly the type of person Boko Haram wanted to abduct when it raided her Chibok school April 14-15 last year and kidnapped some 200 girls.
However, Esther was not there.
The boarding school keeps a three-months-on, three-weeks-off rotation and she had returned home, which is more than two hours away (about 160 miles). The teenager was working her way through a contest that led to a scholarship that would send the winner to America.
To her surprise, she won, and ended up in Hills, Iowa, to stay with Pastor Norman and Bonnie Anderson. Norman is the pastor at Rochester United Methodist Church, and neighboring church Springdale UMC invited Esther to talk about Nigeria on March 11.
The terrorist group formed in 2002 and had become widely spread five or six years ago, she said.
“They started with bombing churches and now they kill Christians and leaders,” Esther told the audience. “They’ve done a lot of horrible, horrible things.”
This past year, they “moved into” her state, Gombe. (Her family lives in a city with the same name as the state.) The Chibok school she attended was actually attacked twice, and she said the school remains closed. “Boko Haram” translates to mean “Western education is sin,” according to CNN.
Esther said some of the girls escaped their captors, but some were turned into suicide bombers. News reports said Boko Haram’s leader claims the girls have been converted to Islam and married off. The Telegraph (London) reports most girls are sold into slavery.
Her church, like others, set up metal detectors and security checkpoints. Esther said a suicide bomber was stopped at the checkpoint, blew themself up and injured many volunteers screening visitors.
While Boko Haram pushes for a Muslim religious state, the 54-year-old country has largely accepted a heritage that is roughly split between Christians and Muslims. Esther points out that when the country selects a Christian president, then the vice president must be Muslim, or vice versa. Most of the southern part of the country is Christian, but the northern part, where Esther’s family lives, is mostly Muslim, putting her family in the minority.
“It’s a sad story,” Esther said.
She calls Nigeria a “good country,” but said there is much corruption and water problems. Add to that Boko Haram, a group that is known for killing people by “splitting their brains open, cutting people’s necks or burning them to ashes,” she said, as well as destroying cars, homes and other buildings.
“Now we live in fear,” she said. “I think and hope it is going to change.”
One member of the audience asked if the Nigerian army tries to fight the terrorists. Ester said they “don’t do a lot.”
After the 200 girls were abducted from her school, the army came, but refused to chase the Boko Haram down.
“The military said they couldn’t go down there,” she said. “Because it is too dangerous.”
Esther attends City High School in Iowa City and is enrolled as a senior. Her mother died when she was 7, and her father is a police officer. Esther described the police being run similar to the army in that her father may be transferred from town to town.
After her talk, a man stood up and suggested the church pray for Esther as the exchange student returns to Nigeria in June. Esther knelt on the small stage as the man began.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
