‘They said they’d shoot us’: Nigerian child recalls how he was taken in mass school abduction

The children at St. Mary Catholic School in Nigeria’s Papiri community were jolted from their sleep with a loud crash at the school gate. Half asleep and confused, they dashed out of their dorms, some landing in the hands of gunmen.

Onyeka Chieme, an elementary school student, waited with bated breath as the loud thuds got nearer. Upon seeing men armed with guns, he recalled jumping through the window with some friends. The gunmen gave chase on motorbikes, shooting into the air and startling him and the others to a halt.

“They said if we ran, they would shoot us,” Chieme told The Associated Press during a visit to his family in Papiri in the north-central Niger State. They watched in horror as the gunmen set fire to a statue of Mary and a Nigerian flag before carting the children away on motorbikes and in buses.

Chieme is one of