Schoolgirl home free

Traumatised Boko Haram captive spends tortured first night after five-month ordeal.

the abduction of the “Chibok girls” from a school in the remote northeast Nigerian town inspired a worldwide campaign for their freedom. The failure of the Nigerian Government and military to rescue them has brought widespread condemnation.

One possible reason the girls remain captive is that they probably have been split into groups and saving one lot could endanger the others, former British PM Gordon Brown, who has adopted their cause, told a news conference at the United Nations on Friday.

He said some despondent families of the missing students were considering holding funerals, as was their tradition when someone had been missing for four months and more. “I do not want the funerals to take place,” said Brown. “They are likely to be alive.”

The schoolgirl, who identified herself as Susannah Ishaya, said she was left in the bush on September 19 and wandered around disoriented for four days until she stumbled on a village where she was taken in.

Ishaya said other kidnapped girls also have been “thrown into the bush” when their captors considered them too ill and a liability, said Mark. No others have made it home yet.

Logging into Facebook this time last week, you’d have thought the sky had fallen: the Nats were in, the left had bombed, and the country was doomed.

The hyperbole and ugliness extended both ways. More than a couple of smug National supporters