Two years in captivity with
the insurgents have obviously taken its toll on Haruna. Frail, gaunt and
listless, she looked at least 10 years older. She insisted that it was the pain
inside of her that hurt the most.
Twenty-year-old Jumai
Haruna spent the last two years in Sambisa forest, the stronghold of the
extremist Islamic sect, Boko Haram. Four months ago, she was rescued by the
security forces. She left the forest with a large scar from a bullet wound on
her arm.
But as she spoke to a Punch
correspondent, last week, at the Internally Displaced Persons’ camp in Yola,
Adamawa State.
The story that Haruna
shared was a tale of rape, abuse, forced labour, torture and her forced
marriage to one of the terrorists.
“I would never have married
such a man but we were all forced to marry them or be killed,” she said with
growing bitterness. “I lost a pregnancy for my original husband because of the
condition of the place.” Haruna’s ‘original husband’ was the man she married
shortly before she was captured by Boko Haram.
‘Boko Haram baby’
Haruna’s tragic journey
into captivity began in 2014 when she and other women were captured by Boko
Haram fighters who attacked their village in Gwoza Local Government Area, in
Borno State, North-East Nigeria. As she shared the details of that journey, she
kept looking down at the child she bore for Hamidu, her Boko Haram captor. The
three weeks old baby slept peacefully in her arms.
When asked to speak about
the abuses she suffered in Sambisa, Haruna said she did not want to talk about
it. Her memories of her cohabitation with Hamidu are full of pain.
“As for this baby I carry
now, it is destiny, but I don’t want to remember the past. I appreciate him
because it is God that gave me the child. I love this child; I cannot do
anything to change my destiny. So, I will take care of my boy child as my own,”
she said.
Haruna is determined to
bring up her son with much love and also ensure that he does not follow in the
footsteps of his father. She vowed never to let her son know who his real
father was.
She said,
“No, I cannot tell him that
his real father is a member of Boko Haram. No, he would be disappointed and it
would be a big blow to him. I will not allow that. I will prevent him from
knowing. But I will love him.”
Interestingly, her original
husband, who is based outside Borno, came visiting her at the Internally
Displaced Persons’ camp in Yola, a week before SUNDAY PUNCH was there. An
official at the IDP camp told our correspondent they allowed Haruna’s husband
to stay with her for a week.
She stated, “Yes, he came
and spent a week with me. He said he is still in love with me, despite all that
I went through and the forced marriage. He said he was still interested in me
and would wait for me. He is a good man. He said that, like every good Muslim,
he believed this was his destiny, and he had to accept it, whether it was good
or bad. He said the fault was not the baby’s and he promised to take care of
him as his own biological child.”
But there is a twist in her
love story. Her husband’s younger brother is a Boko Haram member and was in
Sambisa when she was captured.
“My real husband’s younger
brother is part of Boko Haram,” she said, and mentioned the names of some other
Boko Haram members she came to know. “I have given their names to the security
agencies. He even told me that if he
ever saw my husband, he would kill him.”
She said she felt no
sympathy for Hamidu despite having had his child.
“Even those from the same
village with me, if I know they are with Boko Haram, I would report them to the
military; just like I would report him if I see him now. I want them (military)
to kill him,” she added.
Like Haruna, 18-year-old
Asta Abdullahi, also from Gwoza, was abducted and forcefully wedded to a Boko
Haram member by the sect.
She said she and some of
her friends were working in the farm when the terrorists swooped on their
village, a few months after the kidnap of the 276 Chibok girls, 218 of whom
remain missing.
“When they came into our
village, they started shooting at everybody and everything. We ran, but they
finally caught us inside the bush. We were about 18 in number, eight of us
young girls, and 10 married women. They pushed us inside a big truck and took
us to Sambisa,” she said.
Abdullahi said they were
not the only girls or women there.
“We saw many women there,
more than 200. Later, they threatened us that if we didn’t marry them we would
all be killed. We had no choice; we did not want to die. Some girls managed to
escape before me,” she said.
She said she later managed
to trick her Boko Haram husband into following her to a nearby village.
Narrow escape
Haruna said,
“I saw some of the Chibok girls in Sambisa.
They captured them before us. Some of them had already been impregnated. Some
of them had given birth to children. The Boko Haram members kept them in a
special place in Sambisa. Boko Haram members shared and sold the girls among
themselves.”
When our correspondent
asked how she knew they were the abducted girls from Chibok, Haruna said,
“It was the girls that said
so themselves whenever they sat down (with other kidnapped women) and discussed
with some of us. They confirmed it to us. Boko Haram members called Chibok
girls and other girls or women they captured ‘Ganima.’” According to one of the
officials at the camp, Ganima, loosely translated from the local Hausa language
spoken in the North-East, means “spoils of war.”
She also said that, because
Sambisa was a vast area, the insurgents gave names to different locations
around it.
“They gave names to different places in Sambisa,
names such as Gobara, Imsa, Sabluda, Jimia, and so on. The Chibok girls were
scattered everywhere.” “They have their own medical team and makeshift clinic,
a room, in Sambisa, where they get treated whenever they are injured from the
battle with the army. The clinic was at Gobara. I have seen so many of the
insurgents get injured. I saw more than 10 ‘doctors’ there. They mostly spoke
Kanuri dialect.”
The next day, just before
our correspondent left the IDP camp that sunny afternoon, Abdullahi’s parents showed
up after several visits to different camps in search of their daughter.
Her mother, Azumi Alli,
could not hide her emotions.
“I am very happy that I
have seen one of my lost daughters. Two of them were missing. Before now, I had
given up, thinking that my daughters were dead. Boko Haram killed my two boys
and kidnapped my daughters. I want to thank the army for rescuing my daughter
alive,” she told SUNDAY PUNCH.
Abdullahi’s father, Yusuf
Alli, who is a member of a vigilance group in Madagali Local Government Area in
Adamawa State, said,
“I am a hunter, and part of
a vigilance group. I got information that my daughter was in this camp, so we
came here. If I see the man who forced my daughter into marriage, I will kill
him.
Poor woman
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