It seemed like an ordinary day for 16-year-old Hannah – instead it marked the start of a months-long nightmare that would see her abducted, gang-raped and held captive as a sex slave.

Yet even worse was still to come – her Boko Haram captors would strap a bomb to her body and ordered her to carry out a suicide attack.

Remarkably, in a twist of fate that sounds more like a Hollywood script than real life, Hannah (not her real name) managed to escape. Now, she has chosen to tell the Daily Mail her extraordinary story of survival.      

In November 2013, Hannah’s life was turned upside down when Boko Haram militants stormed her village in Chibok, north-east Nigeria.

In a bid to escape, she jumped into the first car that was willing to take her as a passenger, ignoring the cautionary shakes of the heads of fellow villagers.

She had unknowingly walked straight into the hands of the Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram, who had wreaked terror on her country for decades. Before Hannah realised, her hands were quickly tied and her eyes blindfolded as she was driven into the African bush.

At their camp, she and other women were auctioned off to Boko Haram militants to be ‘married’. Hannah defiantly refused to wed her new ‘owner’ and was thrown into a makeshift cell built from thorn-covered branches as punishment. 

‘There was another girl with me. We were told marriage is our freedom,’ she recalled. ‘If we agreed to marry, then we could leave. If not, we would stay in the cell.’

Survivors of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram stand together in Nigeria, after months of torment 

After being starved and without water for three days, Hannah eventually followed the advice of an elderly woman she now credits with saving her life: do as the fighters say, keep the peace and wait for an opportunity to escape.

The women were eventually punished with nine lashes from a cane for their defiance before being separated, never to see each other again. 

While held captive for two more days, Hannah’s fear further grew when the elderly woman returned, visibly terrified.   

‘I had no idea what they said to her, but the woman came back and told me that I should just lie down and rest,’ she described.

‘I saw the woman was telling me one thing but she was full of fear. I knew something was wrong in the woman’s reaction, but she was telling me everything is okay. I should just rest.’

Hannah eventually succumbed to sleep, only to be awoken by a man claiming to be her husband. He then tried to rape her.

She struggled against his advances and subsequent beatings, screaming and shouting for help. He then ‘called the others’ and returned with five other men.

‘They started shouting, “So you’re stubborn. You think you are better than all those other women who have been married?”,’ Hannah said.

A member of Boko Haram stands with the believed Chibok girls in a video released in August 2016

‘I continued to argue and then I realised I recognised one of the men, he was from my village.

‘He was trying to get the men to calm down, but the other men were saying “she is going to teach the other women to rebel. So let’s just do what we want with her.”

‘They got rope and tied me down. The man I knew left the room and the other men raped me.’

Hannah was left to the care of the elderly woman who washed and covered her ‘beaten body’.

‘I am forever grateful to the woman. If there is something I could give her, I would. There were other women but they didn’t look after me.’

Two days later, Hannah’s final punishment arrived. 

Accused of being stubborn, she was told she was being taken to war. ‘They strapped a bomb to me and said we were going to another village,’ Hannah recalled.

The horrifying truth soon dawned on her. ‘I was going to be a suicide bomber.’

Forced to walk towards what she believed would be her final moments, Hannah trudged on in terror. Then she noticed a familiar face.

The man from her village was following just behind. ‘He was trying to save me,’ Hannah said.

The previous leader of Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau was pictured in October 2014, before his death in 2021

As the pair moved further from the camp, he made his move. ‘He caught up with us and told me to turn my face away because he didn’t want me to see what was about to happen.’

Moments later, he killed the militant assigned to guard her.

Then, with Hannah still in shock, he cut the bomb from her body and freed her from her suicide mission. 

In the confusion that followed, the man who had saved her life vanished. Hannah never learned his name, never discovered what became of him and, more than a decade later, still has no way of thanking the stranger who risked everything to save her.

But while his extraordinary act changed the course of her life, the suffering inflicted on Hannah’s family by Boko Haram was far from over.

In an event that would send tremors across the world, Hannah’s younger sister was kidnapped during Boko Haram’s infamous raid on a school in Chibok in April 2014.

She was among the 276 schoolgirls seized in an abduction that horrified the world and sparked the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign.

While many of the girls have since returned, Hannah’s sister remains missing more than a decade later.

The family’s suffering deepened when Hannah’s father died in August 2014, never knowing the full extent of the horror that had engulfed those he loved.

Determined to honour his final wish, Hannah and her mother returned to their village to scatter his ashes. But even then, there was no peace.

Boko Haram attacked – torching the community and plunging it back into chaos.

As terrified residents fled for their lives, Hannah’s mother reached breaking point.

‘My mother was told to run, but she said there was nothing left to run from,’ Hannah recalled.

‘She said: “You have abducted two of my daughters. One is back. My husband is dead. You burned my house. Honestly, if you want to kill me now, then do it, because there is nothing left.”‘

Around them, the village was being torn apart. Men fled to avoid being hunted down, while women were left behind to bury the dead.

Yet despite everything she has endured, Hannah refuses to let her story end in despair.

She now campaigns for greater awareness of the suffering faced by women and children in Nigeria, while clinging to a hope many in her position would struggle to find.

‘People have suffered. They are still suffering,’ she said. ‘But I want my story to be told so that theirs can be told too.’

And amid the devastation, one dream survives: to become a doctor and help others rebuild lives shattered by the same violence that nearly destroyed her own.