Women abducted by Boko Haram terrorists have recounted harrowing tales of their living conditions in militants’ camps and how they were forced to fight by the sect.
This came as an Islamic scholar, Professor Dauda Mohammed Bello of Adamawa State University warned that the Federal Government may be dealing with a wrong group in the ceasefire agreement it purportedly had with Boko Haram.
This came as an Islamic scholar, Professor Dauda Mohammed Bello of Adamawa State University warned that the Federal Government may be dealing with a wrong group in the ceasefire agreement it purportedly had with Boko Haram.
Meanwhile, the nation waited in vain, yesterday, for the expected release of 219 Chibok girls as promised by the self-acclaimed Director-General of Boko Haram, Mallam Danladi Ahmadu, who assured that the girls would be released yesterday to the Chadian President, Idris Deby for onward presentation to the Nigerian government.
The abducted schoolgirls were yet to be released at press time, yesterday.
In a report released, yesterday, by Human Rights Watch, it outlined testimonies from dozens of former hostages who documented physical and psychological abuse at the hands of the militants, noting that Boko Haram used kidnapped young women and girls on the frontline.
I was forced to hold bullets during attacks
In the report, one 19-year-old woman, who was held in militants’ camps for three months last year, said she was forced to participate in Boko Haram attacks.
She said: “I was told to hold the bullets and lie in the grass while they fought. They came to me for extra bullets as the fight continued during the day. When security forces arrived at the scene and began to shoot at us, I fell down in fright. The insurgents dragged me along on the ground as they fled back to camp.”
In another operation, she said she was handed a knife to kill one of five captured civilian vigilantes brought to one of the camps and summarily executed. According to her, “I was shaking with horror and couldn’t do it. The camp leader’s wife took the knife and killed him”.
A wave of attacks by female suicide bombers earlier this year prompted speculation that Boko Haram may have been using abducted women and young girls to carry out attacks.
But there has been no concrete evidence to prove whether the attackers were kidnap victims who were coerced or volunteers.
The Human Rights group interviewed 30 women and girls between April 2013 and April this year, including 12 of the 57 who fled when the militants raided Chibok, in Borno State, abducting the girls. The women, who were held for between two days to three months, were seized from their homes and villages, while working on the land, fetching water or at school.
They described how they were held in eight different camps thought to be in the vast Sambisa Forest area of Borno and the Gwoza hills, which separate Nigeria from Cameroon.
In the camps, they claimed seeing other women and children, some of them infants and others as old as 65 years, but were unable to say whether all of them had also been kidnapped. The abducted women also narrated how they were made to cook, clean and perform household chores as some were forced to carry stolen goods seized by the insurgents after attacks.
The report also gave an insight into living conditions of the kidnap victims, including those from Chibok, whose plight attracted worldwide attention.
One of the interviewees said she saw some of the Chibok girls forced to cook and clean for other women and girls who had been chosen for “special treatment because of their beauty”.
The women also talked about rape as well as physical violence, including one who said she had a noose placed around her neck and was threatened with death until she converted to Islam.
One 15-year-old said she complained that she was too young to marry one of the militants but a Boko Haram commander dismissed her concerns, saying his five-year-old daughter got married the previous year.
Ceasefire: FG may be dealing with wrong group — Islamic scholar
The Federal Government on October 17, 2014, announced a ceasefire agreement reached with the Boko Haram sect but a day after the agreement, there were reports of attacks carried out by the sect in Borno and Adamawa states, causing many to wonder whether the agreement was reached with the mainstream Boko Haram sect.
An Islamic scholar, Professor Dauda Mohammed Bello of Adamawa State University, however, argued that, “the true Boko Haram sect may not want the peace”.
Professor Bello, an Imam of Jama’atu Nasril Islam, Adamawa State headquarters and one-time secretary of the Adamawa State Muslim Council in an interview with Chat212 in Yola said: “When I listen to the representative of the Boko Haram group in the ceasefire deal, I doubt if he is a true Boko Haram member. From his words, one can guess that he is not actually a true Boko Haram member because the true Boko Haram will not call themselves Boko Haram; they have their own name which is Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’Awati Wal-Jihad (People committed to the Prophet’s teachings for propagation and Jihad). And anytime they talk, they refer to Allah but that representative refers to the association as Boko Haram; that word is enough to disqualify him from being the true Boko Haram member.
“Also, he called President Goodluck Jonathan ‘our President’ in his speech, but the real Boko Haram member would not recognise President Jonathan as their president.”
Bello believes that the actual Boko Haram “may have actually finished by now and what we have are sponsored groups that no longer have religion as their aim and these are those opportunists who see that people are not living in peace so they want to cash in on that”.
Also speaking on the issue, Vice-Chancellor of Modibbo Adama University of Technology, Yola and Chairman of the Centre for Peace and Security Studies, Professor Kyari Mohammed said the peace deal may work out but may not come as soon as expected. He then called for patience on both sides.
“I want to believe that the people who handled the negotiation on the side of government were sincere. I want to also believe that at least they talked to some sections of the Boko Haram but you know, there is bound to be problem. This problem is not peculiar to Boko Haram and Nigerian government. Governments all over the world that need to talk to groups such as Boko Haram, would have to contend with some sections of the group that are not going to be very happy with any form of settlement.
“So naturally, it may work but it will take a lot of patience on both sides. In all parts of the world, whenever you come into this kind of agreement, there would be sections both within the government and among the insurgents that will be very unhappy with a peaceful resolution of the crisis. So for the truce to work, both government and the insurgents will have to be very patient”.
