On Saturday, 4 October, 2013, Bauchi, capital of Bauchi State, was experiencing an unusually cold weather. At the Old GRA, a suburb of the city, Ismaila Gambo, a 21-year old with a neatly trimmed beard got up at dawn and headed to a nearby mosque for his morning prayers. He wore a grey sweatshirt atop a pair of jeans and boots.

Ismaila’s dressing suggested that he was off to some high-energy work. But he was actually headed for Maiduguri, capital of Borno State where he believed he was to carry out a self-appointed divine assignment.

Upstairs, in a bedroom in the Gambos’ home, a duplex, his17–year-old sister, Khadija, said her own prayers. She was dressed in a long gown and wore a headscarf as she waited for her brother to return.

Khadija wore a niqabi, a veil worn by a Muslim woman so that only the eyes are visible. Soon, if all went according to plan, Khadija would be married to a jihadi, a fighter for the cause of Islam. What would her husband be like? She hoped he would be handsome and bearded like Ismaila, her brother.

When the men returned from the mosque just before 6 a.m., Khadija waited until she heard her father go back to bed. Then, before her parents woke up, she stuffed some pillows under the covers to make it seem like she was the one in bed and mentally reviewed her checklist: – clothes for five days, boots, warm socks, a toothbrush, a hairbrush, her niqabi, hijab, and Qur’an.

She grabbed her suitcase, walked downstairs, slipped through the door with her brother and they sped off in one of their father’s many cars.

For the Gambo children, they were embarking on a journey to fulfil destiny. Both had been radicalised by the extremist ideology of Boko Haram and were making a trip to be part of the movement they believed in. But fate had other plans for them.

READ MORE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/kids-of-rich-nigerians-who-finance-boko-haram/