This is the story of Happy and Goodness. When Happy was abducted from her village in northern Nigeria in May 2024, Goodness was not yet born. But as a first-time mother-to-be, Happy was acutely aware of the life growing inside her—the life she was determined to protect, even as she fought for her own survival.
The men who had taken her had already shown their cruelty. She had watched them blow up her husband along with other men in the village. Later, when they took her deep into the bush, some 4 hours away, she saw them carry out their threats— each day, they dug a hole and slit the throat of a person refusing to convert. When they told her that she would be next unless she accepted their faith, she knew she had no choice: escape or die.
A Desperate Flight to Safety
She waited until just before dawn, when her captors were at prayer, and ran. Into the trees, into the unknown. She walked for hours, barefoot and exhausted.
"That same afternoon, I found a village and a church. They told me to keep walking, that I was close to the border," Happy recalls. She crossed into Cameroon on a main road and continued to the town of Mokolo, in the Far North Region. Weak and coughing up blood, with swollen feet and torn clothes, she stopped at a school, where a woman took pity on her.
"She saw that I was pregnant. She let me stay for a few days, gave me shoes and clean clothes," Happy says.
Journey to Safety
From there, she made her way toward Minawao, a refugee camp established in 2013 to shelter Nigerians fleeing the ongoing conflict in Borno State. Today, it hosts more than 80,000 people.
"When Happy arrived, she was really sad," says Temwa Elandi Peter, the manager of the EU-funded transit centre of Gourenguel, where refugees are screened and registered before entering the camp. " There was nothing to eat but we found food and brought it to her."
Goodness Arrives
It was at the transit centre that Happy went into labour. Peter, who works for the local NGO Public Concern, called for a vehicle to rush her to the hospital inside the camp, run by the International Medical Corps (IMC) with EU humanitarian funding. But the baby would not wait.
"I had to intervene to catch the baby and cut the umbilical cord. Mine is not an easy job because there's emotion involved. You see people who need a lot of help and sometimes you feel you can't do enough," Peter says.
Happy named her daughter Goodness as a tribute to the kindness she had encountered in the darkest of times, and a reminder of the husband she had lost. The healthy baby girl was proof that even after unimaginable pain, something good could still come.
A Crisis That Isn’t Over
Although most Nigerians fled to Cameroon before 2017, new refugees like Happy continue to arrive daily. The crisis is far from over. Thanks to the EU humanitarian aid, new arrivals are registered and provided with food, medical care, and protection—offering them a safe environment and a chance to rebuild their lives."
The European Union supports 10 UN agencies and non-governmental organisations in Cameroon's Far North, a volatile region wedged between Chad and Nigeria. The region also faces another challenge: the worsening effects of climate change, with cycles of extreme drought and devastating floods adding to the suffering.
The EU’s humanitarian and development branches are liaising to help refugees become less dependent on aid and more self-reliant by supporting livelihood opportunities.
For now, Happy is safe and feels hopeful. Surprisingly, she has not lost faith in humanity.
"Peace is good,” she says. “I believe in tolerance, and I want Goodness to live in peace with others.”
