How a Nigerian nurse faked a religious conversion to escape a 6-year captivity by Boko Haram

Loksha’s nightmare began in March 2018 when she was working as a nurse for UNICEF in Rann.

After a day of work, she and other aid workers sought refuge at a nearby military base to use Wi-Fi to contact their families. That’s when disaster struck. Boko Haram fighters stormed the base, killing some and abducting others, including Loksha.

At the time of her abduction, she was one of the highest-profile victims of Boko Haram's widespread kidnapping spree.

As a mother of two, she decided to work in the region to provide for her mother's dementia care, despite the region's volatile security situation.

For the first few months, the militants kept their captives isolated, occasionally reaching out to their employers, demanding ransoms and the release of their prisoners. When their demands were ignored, the captors’ anger grew, and they warned the women that the worst was yet to come. “The nation will be surprised,” Loksha said the fighters told them.

Less than a year after her abduction, Loksha told the fighters she would convert to Islam, taking the name Halima. "I had to join them because I can't beat them," she told the New York Times. She learnt to perform Islamic rituals outwardly while maintaining her Christian beliefs in secret, praying when she could, away from the prying eyes of her captors.

At one point, she was enslaved by Abu Umar, a top Boko Haram commander, with whom she had a child, which elevated her status within the group. When he was killed in 2021 for committing adultery, Loksha was passed on to another commander, which brought some advantages: better living conditions, food, and a semblance of privacy.

In October 2023, Loksha crossed paths with Akilawus, another woman held by Boko Haram. The two quickly bonded, sharing stories of their captivity and dreams of escape. Together, they began planning their daring escape, gathering money by selling bits of household items.

Loksha and Akilawus managed to save enough money to enlist a woman from the Fulani ethnic group—nomadic people known for navigating the bush. In exchange for $90 (a small fortune in the region), the woman’s husband surveyed the Boko Haram camp and plotted an escape route.

At dusk on October 24, the women slipped out of the camp under the cover of darkness, with nothing more than a few changes of clothes, some money, and basic electronics.

Loksha gave her son a dose of diazepam to keep him calm. They travelled through the night, riding donkeys and crossing rivers.

After two days, they reached Diffa, a town in Niger, but their journey wasn’t over. The women continued their trek to Geidam, a town in Nigeria, where they reached a Nigerian military checkpoint.

When they arrived, they burst into joyous praise, shouting thanks to Jesus for their newfound freedom. "We are really saved," Loksha said.

She believes that Boko Haram spies are still watching and that her captors will stop at nothing to silence her. “I know that they may not like to see me alive,” she said. “Nowhere is safe.”

Boko Haram has been responsible for thousands of abductions in northern Nigeria, including the infamous kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in 2014. Since then, there have been many more cases of mass abductions, with at least 1,700 children taken from schools, subjected to unimaginable abuse, including rape.