That I am alive today is a miracle’: Nigerian schoolgirl

Portrait of 20-year-old Amina Ali Nkeki. She is currently undertaking a one-year preparatory course in social science. She hopes to study accounting so she can work as an accountant in the feature.

ABUJA, Nigeria — Amina Ali Nkeki was calm as she recalled her two years of torment while held captive by Boko Haram terrorists.

She was 17 when she and 274 other girls were abducted from a school in Chibok in northeastern Nigeria in 2014.

“They came in the night. They shot sporadically into the air. They gathered us together. They threatened to kill us if we didn’t do what they said. They quarreled among themselves. At the end, they decided to take us away,” Nkeki said.

She was sexually assaulted and faced other abuse at the hands of the Islamic State-linked militants before she managed to escape last year.

“I never thought I would live to see another day,” she said. "That I am alive today is a miracle.”

Now she is preparing for another miracle. An American church has agreed to send Nkeki and four other young women who escaped from the clutches of Boko Haram to a Christian school in Southern California — Hope International University.

The costs for the women’s travel expenses, plus tuition and housing that could amount to more than $30,000 a year will be paid by the Church of the Servant King in Gardena, Calif

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