At the age of 13, Ovey Friday was accused of witchcraft by his stepmother and taken to a traditional shrine in the central Nigerian state of Nasarawa, where he was tortured.
By the time a neighbor alerted police and he was taken to the hospital, the damage was irreversible.
The herbalist brought charcoal, put something on my hands, tied my hands [along] with my leg, put pepper there inside the charcoal, then cover[ed] me with a bedsheet, recalls Friday, now aged 19.
Doctors were forced to sedate him and operate on him. Friday woke up to find his left hand amputated, while the fingers on his right hand were either amputated or permanently scarred.
I cried and I cried, Friday tells the BBC.
In the years that followed, people stared at him on the streets or taunted him. I wish they knew me, like, when I was born, he says.
Alongside his grief was a steely determination to keep going.
Yet his academic ambitions were nearly interrupted two years ago, when he tried to sit Nigeria's university entrance examination, run by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (Jamb).
The system's biometric fingerprint process could not accommodate someone like him, as it could not capture his scarred thumbprint or the prints of the other two scarred fingers.
Thankfully he got lucky as one of his guardians, along with disability rights campaigners, pushed officials to accept his toe print as verification of his ID.
Friday is now studying English and literary studies at a university in Nasarawa, a state which borders the capital, Abuja.
He is the first in his family to enrol at university.
Not everyone has someone to push for them, he says. Some people will just stop trying, Friday says.
Back on campus, Friday is settling down as a student. Between lectures and assignments, he is learning new ways to write again, to live independently away from home and to make new friends.
He is showing Nigerians that obstacles and prejudice can be overcome, and people with disabilities can succeed like everyone else if given the opportunity.
