Blamadu Lawan, Vice Principal of Government Secondary School, Chibok where over 200 female students were abducted by insurgents in 2014, has said that Amina Ali, the first girl rescued by Nigerian troops on Wednesday was a “quiet and humble girl”.

Lawan told the BBC that the girl had changed dramatically and seemed to have matured faster.

“She was completely changed. She had become very thin and awkward,” Lawan said after identifying her when she was brought to her home town Mbalala, near Chibok.

“She didn’t use to say much and now she looks motherly,” he added.

A female neighbour of the family who spoke to the AFP also described her as “a darling of the neighbourhood”, quick to help with household chores and keep the family compound clean.

“She always wore a smile on her face and hardly quarreled with any child in our area. This is why she kept many friends among the children of the neighbourhood,” the neighbour told AFP.

Amina and her elder brother were the only surviving children of Muslim parents Ali and Binta and lived in a mud-brick home with a corrugated iron roof in the mainly Christian market town.

Eleven of her siblings died and shortly after Amina, then aged 17, was kidnapped from the school on April 14, 2014, her father died, said Ayuba Alamson Chibok, a local teacher who knows the family