Two teenage girls who were abducted in Bama, Borno
State, by insurgents have identified the picture of the Amir (Commander)
that led others to abduct them from their family home, where he was a
daily caller before he joined Boko Haram. Maimuna, 17, and Maryam, 15,
are Shuwa from the Muhammat family in Bama, where the only male of four
children, Usman, was going to secondary
school along with a close
friend, Abba Fanni.
At the Maiduguri residence of the Muhammat
family, where they are now living as Internally Displaced Persons
(IDPs), the friendly matriarch, Ashe, who only speaks Shuwa and Kanuri
declined to speak about her experience with insurgents, as it would
remind her how she watched helplessly as armed terrorists, acting on
instructions of a boy she helped raise, took away her three daughters
and son.
Maryam recalled the friendship of the Boko Haram Amir
called Abba. “He tried to introduce our brother to some friends, but he
was suspicious. Suddenly, we started hearing that Abba had joined the
insurgents. He was like a member of our family. When Boko Haram took
over Bama, our father fled to Maiduguri and left us in Bama. Abba
stopped us one day when we were going to fetch water and told my sister,
Maimuna that he loves her and will one day come to marry her.”
Maryam
and her sisters went back home and told their mother, and they shrugged
it off. But a few days after, he came along with armed men on
motorcycles to ask for Usman. “When they could not find him, they forced
I and my two sisters to go with them. They blindfolded us and whisked
us away on the motorcycles to a house in Bama.”
Maryam said it
was when she was in detention that she got to know that Abba was an
Amir. “On our seventh day in the cell, we overheard the insurgents
planning to marry us off the following day. We wept but fortunately for
us, there was a problem somewhere in Bama around 11am the next morning
and all the insurgents rushed there to reinforce. We all sneaked out,
with some other detainees and escaped. We got home and escaped with our
mum from Bama that same day. Later, our mother told us that after we
were taken, the insurgents went back and took away our brother. It’s
about three years now and we haven’t heard anything about him.”
Maryam
said while fleeing Bama, she met some escapees also trekking to
Maiduguri through a bush path, on a journey that lasted nine days. “I
first stayed at Dalori camp from where I traced my father and other
relations.”
The girls said shortly after relocating to Maiduguri,
they visited the Customs area one day and joined others looking at the
poster which showed most-wanted insurgents when they saw Abba’s photo.
“We lost control and shouted that this is the fellow who abducted us. We
hope that he’ll be arrested one day and we’ll go and watch him being
executed.”
Both teens said their priority is to marry and settle
down, adding that if their husbands want them to go to school, they
would love that.
Source: Dailytrust
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