Some abducted Chibok girls have said the kidnapping of over 200 girls from Chibok town by Boko Haram was accidental.

The girls made the revelation in diaries they kept while they were in captivity, which has obtained by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

What happened:

The girls were abducted from their hostel at the Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State by Boko Haram fighters on April 14, 2014.

Some of them were able to escape when the vehicle they were being conveyed in developed a fault.

Since then, a number of the girls have either been released or escaped from their captors.

What the girls are saying:

One of such girls, Naomi Adamu said;

• The insurgents had come to steal machinery for house building but they were unable to find what they came for.

“One boy said they should burn us all, and they (some of the other fighters) said, ‘No, let us take them with us to Sambisa (Boko Haram’s remote forest base) … if we take them to Shekau (the group’s leader), he will know what to do,’” Adamu wrote.

• They kept the book away from their captors and took turns to write their experiences.

“We wrote it together. When one person got tired, she would give it to another person to continue,” Adamu said.

• They received regular beatings, Koranic lessons and marriage pressure as well threats to convert.
• They developed amusing nicknames for the fighters.
• When five girls tried to escape, the militants tied them up, dug a hole in the ground. They asked one of the girls to behead them or get killed.

“We are begging them. We are crying. They said if next we ran away, they are going to cut off our necks,” Adamu wrote.

• The insurgents threatened to burn those who have refused to convert. It was later revealed that what they had was a gallon of water instead of petrol.
• Some of those who escaped were returned to the insurgents by owners of shops where they slept. The girls were whipped and threatened with decapitation.