"Three days before Christmas in 2011, gunmen came in the evening to the door of Deborah Peter’s home in northern Nigeria. Her father, a pastor, was in the shower. The men, part of the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram, dragged him from it and asked him to renounce his faith. When he refused, they shot him three times, in the chest." Deborah takes up the story.

"My brother was in shock. He started demanding, "What did my dad do to you? Why did you shoot him?" The men told him to be quiet or else they were going to shoot him too. Then, the men discussed whether they should kill my brother. One of the Boko Harams said they should kill Caleb, my brother. The second man said that he was just a boy and that he was too young to kill. But the third man said that they should make an exception in this case because Caleb will only grow up to be a Christian pastor. Caleb asked me to plead with them for his life but they told me to shut up or they would kill me too. The leader agreed that they should kill him and shot my brother two times. My dad had still been breathing but when he saw them shoot Caleb, he died. My brother fell down but was still alive and gasping. The men shot him in his mouth. Then, my brother stopped moving and died. I was in shock. I did not know what was happening. The men put me in the middle of my dad and brother’s corpses, told me to be quiet or be killed, and left me there. I stayed there until the next day when the army came. They removed my dad and brother’s bodies to the mortuary and took me to the hospital.

Meanwhile teachers have today abandoned their classrooms which were shut as they took to the streets of the capital Abuja to protest against the evils of Boko Haram. One hundred and seventy six of their members have been killed in targeted violence as they are accused of spreading "Western education" - something Boko Haram considers an anathema. The BBC reports