She Faked a Religious Conversion to Escape Terrorists
The New York Times
After being abducted by an offshoot of Boko Haram in Nigeria six years ago, a Christian nurse describes her daring escape and how faith kept her alive.
For more than six years, Alice Loksha Ngaddah bided her time, waiting for an opportunity to escape her abductors.
She had been kidnapped in Nigeria by a splinter group of Boko Haram, one of the world’s deadliest terrorist groups.
Her moment to flee arrived in October, when Ms. Loksha, the 3-year-old son she gave birth to in captivity and another abductee, Fayina Ali Akilawus, slipped out of the militants’ camp at dusk. They traveled by donkey, ox cart, boat and car for more than three days until arriving at a military outpost in northeastern Nigeria.
As they neared their destination, the women erupted in praises to Jesus, shouting, “We are really saved,” Ms. Loksha recalled, speaking to The New York Times this week in her only interview since regaining freedom.
When she was abducted, Ms. Loksha became one of the highest-profile of the thousands of people Boko Haram has kidnapped over the past decade. She was a nurse and mother of two, working for UNICEF at a clinic in Rann, Nigeria, an area of intense conflict between the military and Boko Haram. She took the job to earn money for her mother’s dementia care, despite the risks.
After work one day in March 2018, she and several other aid workers went to the military base in Rann to use the Wi-Fi to call their families. Suddenly gunfire erupted, the aid workers hit the ground, and an intense battle unfolded around them. Fighters charged into the room, killing and wounding some of the aid workers.
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