Abducted teenagers have revealed how Boko Haram terrorists
dragged them into forests and forced them to become sex slaves in the guise of
marriage. Some managed to escape, but life has been as bleak as it was under
the militants, as they face societal neglect and abject poverty. Some of the
girls narrated their experiences to our correspondent.
Many of the girls are now mothers, but are still under 18.
They were held by the militants for between two and four years in forests,
exposed to rain and sun, used as sex slaves sometimes by more than one man, and
in most cases and had no access to medical care or adequate food.
The militants forced them out of their homes, and they lived
with the same men who in many cases brutally killed their parents before
abducting them. After long periods in the forests, many are unable to trace any
surviving member of their families. They have either sacked their villages or
forced survivors to relocate to unknown places. Some have opted to start
new lives, without any support. Many hawk to feed.
Maryam Ali, now 17, was 14 years old and five months
pregnant when she was abducted from Bama in Borno State and taken to the
Sambisa forest and married out to a Boko Haram militant.
“I am from Mayanti a village near Bama. When I got married
about a year before my abduction, my husband took me to Bama where we were
staying. During the attack on Bama, my husband escaped to Maiduguri because the
militants were looking for men to kill. When they came to our house and met me
alone, they took me away. Shortly after, I delivered my first child, I took in
again for my militant husband,” she narrated.
“There was no food in the camp and everybody was hungry. It
was a very lawless camp. They would say you were married to someone but about
three or four other men would join him to sleep with you. One day, I took my
child to look for fruits to eat and escaped to where I got a vehicle that took
me to a military checkpoint. The soldiers brought me to Maiduguri,” a tearful
Maryam recounted.
“When my husband saw me with a child and another pregnancy,
he fell down and died. I don’t know if my parents are still alive or in our
village. It is after Bama. Nobody can go there because of the militants. I had
never been to Maiduguri. I only came to join my husband who is now late. I have
nobody to help me now. I knit caps to feed myself. I will soon give birth
again. There is nobody to help me. I do not go for ante-natal care because I do
not have money for it,” the teenage mum added.
Sixteen-year-old Hauwa Umar was 14 and a JSS2 student in
Bama when the militants stormed her home, insisted they wanted to marry her
instantly and took her away. Her parents objected. She was young and yet to
complete secondary school, they, said.
“Before I could say a word, they slaughtered my father instantly,”
Hauwa recalled.
“They also held my mother and slaughtered her, then dragged
me into their vehicle and drove away. They took me and detained me in a house
in Bama where I remained for one month. Nobody talked to me within that period.
It was after one month that they took me to the forest and forced me to marry
the man who killed my parents. I lost my virginity to him, took in for him and
gave birth to a baby girl who died three months after,” she added.
"One day, I saw them drag one young man to our camp, and my
‘husband’ shot and killed him. I became so afraid of him. Three days later he
came in and told me they were going out on an operation. The very day they left
I prayed around 3am and sneaked out of the camp. I trekked for two weeks before
I got to Bama. All my legs were swollen. It was from there that soldiers
brought us to Maiduguri. I want to go back to school but I have nobody to help
me," Hauwa lamented.
Aisha Ibrahim, who is 17 years old, lived with her mother
and two sisters in Kirnuwa, Borno State. The terrorists stormed her village and
took away all the three girls. That was three years ago. She was 14 then.
"It was in the evening, I came out of the bathroom and
wanted to dress up when we started hearing gunshots. Almost
immediately, some unarmed people came into our house and said we should all get
ready and follow them to safety because Boko Haram militants were in the
village and would come and kill us. Our mother was so thankful to them and
asked us to follow them," the teen girl recalled.
"We joined them outside our house where they parked about
five trucks with some girls already inside. We didn’t know they were militants
themselves until they took us to a forest and we saw some of them carrying
guns. The truck carrying my two sisters went a different direction. The same
day I arrived at the forest they introduced one Sadiq to me as my husband," she
recounted.
"I lived with them for over two years. Within the period, I
followed them to attack three communities. Whenever we went for attack, they
would give us long black hijabs to wear and cover our faces. They would also
give us socks, gloves and long boots. We would stand on Hilux jeeps. Some of us
would be given guns but I never carried a gun. I was always with a knife," Aisha added.
"The wife of the amir (commander) was always leading the
women. We were always in company of the men. Our sole duty was to attack and
catch women and children. My first outing was the attack on Monguno. I can
remember one pregnant woman we caught who was shouting that she was the wife of
a policeman," she recollected.
"Our commander’s wife kicked her and she fell down. She
trampled on her neck and said she was the type we were looking for. She asked
me to take her to one of the trucks but I showed the woman the way to escape,"
the teenager narrated.
In a separate attack on a village whose name she couldn’t
remember, Aisha said they abducted a woman and took her to their camp but
because the woman was not ready to cooperate with the leadership, they publicly
executed her. Aisha said she became terrified.
"But my worst moment was the day I was rescued from the Boko
Haram camp. It started as a normal day until there was the sound of a
helicopter. We all heard the sound but I did not see it. Shortly after the sound
stopped, the commander asked all of us to go into the nearby bush and pick the
supplies dropped by the helicopter. I was there and picked some food items. I
overheard some of the senior insurgents saying we should attack a nearby
military formation," the girl recounted.
"We returned to the camp not too long when soldiers attacked
the camp with heavy artillery. The militants returned fire and there was a
heavy battle that lasted for over one hour. I hid under a tree and later
crawled towards the soldiers. I told the soldiers I was a captive and they
picked me into their truck to Maiduguri along with other people," she
explained.
"On arrival in Maiduguri, I was taken to the camp at the
GGSS. When the school resumed, I saw one of the students that was my classmate
at Kirinuwa. It was that student that took me to where my mother is staying in
Maiduguri. I met my mother with one of my abducted sisters who also escaped
from the camp they took her to after having a serious case of VVF (Vesicola
Virginia Fistula)," Aisha narrated.
"We have no access to medication. We cannot even feed until
I hawk sachet water on the streets and make about N130 daily," she added
ruefully.
Dada Umar is a 16-year-old Cameroonian from Marua who was
abducted by the militants at Banki, a Nigeria/Cameroon border town. Her elder
sister, Fatima, was taken and remains missing. At 13, she was forced to marry
one of the militants called Bana, who got her pregnant.
"Bana told me he was from Bama. I was eight months pregnant
when I escaped from the camp one night and found myself in a Nigerian village
and I was taken to where some soldiers had a checkpoint and they brought me to
Maiduguri. I was abducted with only one dress but the militants gave me a lot
of dresses. I was in a French school before I was abducted," Dada said.
Seventeen-year-old Yakaka Babagana lived with her parents in
Bama town until five armed militants stormed her home and told her father that
they would either marry her or kill them and take her away. Yakaka yielded to
the forced marriage to save her parents.
“I had completed my secondary education waiting to get
admission into a tertiary institution. They brought out N2,000 and gave to my
father as my bride price and dragged me into their vehicle and zoomed off. I
was in the forest with them moving from one camp to the other until I took in
for my so-called husband, Bakura, from Alagarno. Bakura left me in one of the
camps and went for an attack when I was pregnant for eight months but he was
killed in the attack,” she recounted.
“The commander called me and said my husband died during an
attack and they would give me another husband tomorrow. That same night I
escaped from the camp. I only had a wrapper on me and a scarf when I walked
into the bush as if I wanted to go and ease myself. I trekked for two days and
two nights before reaching a tarred road from where some people in a private
vehicle helped and brought me to Maiduguri,” she added.
Maimuna Isa is 16-year-old, from Zaki Local Government Area
of Bauchi State, but was born in Maiwo in Borno State. Her father was out
fishing when Boko Haram raided their village and took her with a friend,
Fatima, into the forest. Fatima took ill and died on their first day in the
forest.
"We were in the forest for almost five months before the
amir called me and some other girls and said he would give us out in marriage
that day. One elderly militant was introduced to me as my husband. I stayed for
another seven months without having anything to do with him until one day when
three men came to force me to sleep with him. After some months, one elderly
woman told me I was pregnant," Maimuna recalled in tears.
"I escaped from the camp one night and met one man in the
bush who also escaped from another camp. Both of us ran into a Fulani
settlement and they escorted us to a military camp from where they brought us
to Maiduguri. I never saw them kill anybody but I saw them training a lot of
men on weapon handling and war techniques," she said.
Reacting, the chairman of the State Emergency Management
Agency (SEMA), Engr Ahmed Alhaji Satomi, said they were able to identify cases
of such people living in IDP camps while others were outside the camps, adding
that the state government was catering for some of them through his agency and
the Ministry of Women Affairs.
"Government is proactive under my agency by catering for
those we have been able to identify and also trying to reintegrate them," he
said.
"We have a programme to rehabilitate and integrate them. We
have cases of some that escaped, and some were abducted alongside their sisters
and brothers. The situation is so pathetic. But those in our midst as an
agency, we cater for them, Satomi stated.
"We are also advocating for better ways of getting their
lives back. I know there are a number of them in the host communities. There
are some that are too shy to bring themselves to public domain," he added.
"We are working to come out with a plan for government to
look for them, call them out and get their data. We know that some of them have
trauma which require both medical and mental attention. We will do everything
possible to identify the others," the SEMA boss said.
Culled from Daily Trust
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