The school helping girls to heal after Boko Haram atrocities

What 19-year-old Binta Usman remembers most vividly about her early days at the Lafiya Sarari girls' school in Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria's Borno state, are the frequent tears that made it hard for her to concentrate in class.

- Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani MAIDUGURI

"We'd all be sitting in class and all of us would just be crying," she said.

Like Usman, whose father was killed and family held captive by the militant jihadist group Boko Haram, all 100 women and girls at the school have either witnessed a parent's murder or been kidnapped themselves.

Another pupil, 17-year-old Hassana, recalls being forced to join the militants, handling weapons and carry out acts of violence. "We drank blood," she said.

Boko Haram has targeted schools as part of its campaign of atrocities in north-eastern Nigeria since 2010. It has carried out massacres and multiple abductions, including 2014's killing of 59 schoolboys, the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok in 2014 and 101 girls in Dapchi in 2018.

The Lafiya Sarari school was set up in response to the terror Boko Haram has inflicted. Established in 2017 by the Neem Foundation, a Nigerian charity set up to help communities affected by violence, the school is designed to provide support and education to those who have suffered trauma.

"What we do is a trauma-informed learning approach," said Dr Fatima Akilu, a psychologist who helped set up the foundation.