•Chibok girls, others, learn to love children born of forced marriage, rape
•Their torturous paths to freedom
•Our work not done at their rescue – Military
THE girl whose life was beginning wheezed in her sleep. She babbled in a language no school could teach. Her mother, Jinkai Yama, leaned over, her lips pursed as if she meant to kiss the child. There was so much love in Yama’s intent gaze. And the child probably felt it snuggling close to her mother’s belly.
It’s 10 years since Yama’s abduction by terrorist group, Boko Haram; now 26, she is eager to reclaim the decade that was stolen from her life. At 16, Yama was abducted alongside 275 other girls from the Government Girls Secondary Schoolv (GGSS), in Chibok, Borno State.
One year after her abduction, Yama was forcibly married to Usman, a Boko Haram insurgent. But she got separated from him when he joined the Mamman Nur faction of the terrorist sect. Usman relocated to join the new faction leaving Yama behind, pregnant with child.
Yama remained with the late Abubakar Shekau splinter group. She was subsequently taken to Dutsen Gava, in Gwoza LGA of Borno State. There, she caught the attention of another insurgent called Abubakar. The latter married her and sired two other children with her.
One day, in Dutsen Gava, Yama climbed a mountain and saw a military formation nearby. After some careful observation, she discovered that several Boko Haram members and their wives were sneaking out of their stronghold to surrender to the soldiers.
Few days after her discovery, she grabbed her three children and snuck with a group of fellow captives to surrender to the soldiers. She set out with fellow escapees at 10 am and by 2 pm, they arrived at the nearby military formation of the Joint Task Force (JTF)’s Operation Hadin Kai to give themselves up.
“My husband, Abubakar, is still Dutsen Gava. I didn’t let him know about my plan to escape. He would have prevented me,” she said.
At the time of her surrender, Yama was with her three children and two other abducted Chibok girls: Falmata Lawal and Asabe Ali. Yama, Lawal and Ali were numbered 20, 3, and 12 on the abducted Chibok girls’ list.
Like Yama, Kauna Luka was abducted from GGSS, in Chibok, in her teens. She was 15 years old at the period. Luka spent about eight years living as a captive bride of a Muhammad, a Boko Haram insurgent in Sambisa.
She said, “I had two children for Muhammad. My first child, a boy, was named after the after but he died quite young while we were in the forest. Then I had a second child for my Muhammad. Her name is Maryam and she is currently two years old.”
Luka disclosed that although Muhammad showed her kindness, she couldn’t bear to live with him any longer. “He forced me to marry him,” she said.
Luka, 25, escaped captivity in the company of two other Chibok girls, Ruth Bitrus, 24, and Hannatu Musa, 26. The trio were received by the military after spending eight years with their abductors who later married them.
Apart from Hannatu Musa who came out of the bush with two children, Ruth Bitrus and Kauna Luka both have a kid each.
But despite the circumstances in which Yama, Luka and others got married and had their children, they can not bring themselves to hate them. “I love my three children. It doesn’t matter what their fathers did or who they were, my children are a gift from Allah. I love them and I will take care of them,” said Yama.
Likewise, Luka confessed deep love for her daughter, Maryam, stressing that the two-year-old bears no blame for the circumstances in which she was conceived and birthed to the world.
“I am happy that I have her. She is a sweet, innocent child,” Luka said.
Indeed, no child should be born into ugliness. And no parents would pray that their teen girls experience the horror endured by Yama, Luka and others from the point of their abduction to their forced marriages in Boko Haram’s terrorist camp.
Since their surrender and subsequent rehabilitation by government and the Nigerian military, Yama, Luka and a few others claimed they have enjoyed unimaginable reprieve.
Following their rescue, the ladies underwent medical examinations with their children before they were eventually handed over to the Borno State government.
Few months earlier, the Nigerian Army had presented two Chibok schoolgirls rescued by troops of the Operation Hadin Kai in Borno.
Presenting the rescued schoolgirls to journalists in Maiduguri, Borno’s capital, the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 7 Division of the Nigerian Army, Maj. Gen. Shiaibu Waidi, disclosed that the troops of the Operation Hadin Kai have rescued 11 of the abducted Chibok girls in the last few months.
Maj. Gen Waidi identified the rescued girls as Yana Pogu who was rescued with four children and Rejoice Penki, who was rescued with two children.
The two girls are of serial numbers 19 and 70 on the list of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls, he said. Other rescued abductees in the last few months include Hauwa Joseph, Mary Dauda, Miss Ruth Bitrus, Kauna Luka and Hanatu Musa. Others are Falmata Lawal, Asabe Ali, Jinkai Yama, Yana Pogu and Rejoice Senki, Aisha Grema.
Most of the girls were rescued with their children. The names of the rescued girls are in serials 18, 46, 41, 58, 7, 11, 3, 12, 20, 19 and 70 respectively (in the order of rescue) in the list of the abducted Chibok Schoolgirls.
The statistics of the 276 abducted Chibok School girls indicates that 57 girls escaped in 2014, 107 girls released in 2018, three recovered in 2019, two recovered in 2021 and 11 girls rescued so far in 2022.
This brings to a total 180 Chibok girls out of captivity, remaining 96 girls still unaccounted for,” the GOC said.
At the backdrop of the development, the Theatre Commander (TC), Operation Hadin Kai, Maj. Gen Christopher Musa, announced the opening of a new camp for hosting repentant Boko Haram members that were surrendering and assured that the new camp was in a safe area where the military could secure it.
The Hajj Camp
In the wake of the military’s push to rehabilitate rescued abductees and guarantee their reintegration into mainstream society, about 262 children have been delivered by wives of the former fighters of Boko Haram and Islamic State for West African Province (ISWAP) at the Hajj Camp, a rehabilitation centre in Maiduguri. The centre currently hosts about 14,804 ex-insurgents, who surrendered with their families, according to The Nation findings.
The Hajj Camp is one of the four centres established by the state government in 2021 for rehabilitation of the terrorists that have surrendered to Nigerian troops.
About 5,200 of the total male population (14,804) were gun fighters. Of the figure, 3,427 live with their wives in the camp, while 1,773 are bachelors. There are a total of 4,443 spouses in the camp alone. That is aside those in the other three camps within the state. There are 5,170 children in the Hajj Camp, with male children numbering 2,691 and females, 2,479.
The Special adviser on security to the Borno State governor, Brigadier-general Abdullahi Sabi Ishaq (rtd) said over 3,500 ex-fighters have been reintegrated with their families by the government.
Head of the Medical Facility, Dr. Mohammed Saleh, revealed that new born babies in the camp comprised of 150 females and 112 males. A further breakdown of the figure showed that in July this year, 94 babies were delivered at the facility, with 98 delivered in August, 60 in September and 11 in October.
On abortion, he said the medical facility did not record any case of maternal mortality or abortion in the camp, saying such critical cases were usually referred to the state owned Umoru Shehu Specialist Hospital and University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH).
The Borno State commissioner for women affairs and social development, Zuwaira Gambo, said government is providing the former insurgents with mental health and psychological support as part of combined rehabilitation efforts of the state, federal government and non-governmental organisations.
According to her, the government has a well-equipped department that handles the psycho social aspect. “We do this in partnership with the Neuropsychiatric centre,” she stated.
While noting that some of the women and children in the centre were abducted and forcibly mauled into premature womanhood, Gambo said the government provides ex-insurgents and their wives to post-traumatic health support. The intent is to deradicalise them, she said.
“We also engage them, especially the women in skills acquisition. Sexually abused women are being attended to. We are more particular about deradicalising the fighters and non-fighters,” said Gambo.
Giwa Barracks
Inmates of the Joint Investigation Centre (JIC), at the Giwa Barracks, in the old GRA, Maiduguri, are also recipients of such efforts. The JIC is for temporary holding and investigation of suspected and confirmed arrested terrorists.
Currently, there are a total of 1,893 of such suspects in custody, out of which 886 are awaiting transfer to Giwa Project in Kainji for prosecution.
A total of 323 of them were recently transferred to the Operation SAFE CORRIDOR in Gombe State for the de-radicalisation, rehabilitation and reintegration programme.
At the JIC, there are a number of female detainees who also have children with them. One of them is Aisha Ibrahim, who has spent a year and some months at the detention facility with her child, Muhammadu.
Ibrahim was pregnant at the time of her arrest and she gave birth to Muhammadu on May 15, exactly seven months ago.
Despite the precariousness of the situation in which she conceived him, Ibrahim couldn’t bring herself to abort the pregnancy after her rescue. “I never thought of it,” she said, adding that the military and government health officers encouraged her to keep the child. To this end, they took adequate care of Ibrahim through her pregnancy to the delivery of her child.
Since she gave birth, Muhammadu has been receiving immunisation to prevent him from contracting childhood killer diseases. The immunisation card of the child revealed that he took another immunization on November 28, at the military medical facility.
Majority of the female detainees are wives of suspected and arrested Boko Haram terrorists who have been profiled and categorised for either prosecution or deradicalization, rehabilitation and reintegration.
For instance, Maryam, another inmate of the the Giwa Barracks has a daughter, Aisha, from her forced marriage to Aliyu, a Boko Haram insurgent. The latter was killed in a gun battle with troops of the JTF. Few months after her husband’s demise, Maryam was arrested alongside other captive wives of Boko Haram insurgents and transferred to the Joint Investigation Centre (JIC), at the Giwa Barracks.
Maryam told The Nation that she had just put to bed at the time of her arrest. “I was scared that they would kill me and my child but since I got here, I have been treated better. The female soldiers and guards have been very supportive. Sometimes, they assist in caring for my child and the children of other women,” she said.
Like Maryam, Hafsatu enthused about the camaraderie accorded her since her transfer to the detention facility. “They do not treat us like prisoners. They play with our children and cheer us up when we are sad,”Hafsatu.
Several female inmates of the JIC enthused that contrary to rumours that they have heard about indiscriminate killings of babies sired with Boko Haram insurgents, the military authorities of the JIC, Giwa barracks have been quite supportive of them.
“They provide nursing mothers, in particular, with toiletries, baby clothes and other basic needs. Sometimes, the male soldiers buy our children toys and play with them,” said Hafsatu.
A long way from misery
The experiences of Yama, Luka, Hafsatu, among others certainly contrasts with the reality of former captive wives of Boko Haram in the past.
While returnee Chibok girls, Yama and Luka enthuse about the warmth and acceptance they and their children currently enjoy from their neighbours and immediate families, the reality was markedly different for ex-captive wives of Boko Haram and their children several years ago.
A different kind of cruelty was meted out to Abuya, eight, and his mom, Ba Amsa. The latter was 18 years of age when she was delivered of Abuya by a midwife at the Dalori refugee camp.
Ba Amsa welcomed him with mixed feelings. Every day unfurled as a fresh struggle to accept the newborn. She struggled through grief and memories of her ugly fate as a captive bride of his father in Sambisa.
Until she put to bed, Ba Amsa dreamt of ripping her belly open to rid it of Abuya, whose immense bulk tilted her tiny frame forward; with every step, it looked like she would keel over. But she didn’t. She silently bore the pains of rape and demands of pregnancy on her lean body. At full term, her unborn child jutted from her belly, like a vulgar cyst weighing on her limbs, impeding her teenage strides.
On Ba Amsa’s due date, she went into labour with hostile feelings, in a hostile environment. Abuya emerged from her belly the way the tsetse fly seeking to know its true nature, follows faeces into the latrine. Before she put to bed, Ba Amsa dreaded that her child would become a burden to her. Immediately she put to bed, Ba Amsa regretted that her beautiful child was born to strife and ugliness.
There is no gainsaying Abuya was sired in pain and utmost cruelty. Due to a limp suffered by his mother, Ba Amsa, as a result of childhood polio, she couldn’t run fast enough to escape when Boko Haram insurgents stormed her neighbourhood in Bama, in September 2014.
They abducted her and her sister and took them to an improvised women’s prison for three months. “They would tell us, ‘Men are coming to look at you,’ and told us to stand up and show our breasts, then they would pick five or 10 of us,” she said. The man who picked her was someone she knew from Bama and they stayed in a house in the village. “He was under 30 and didn’t seem to know anything about religion…I couldn’t resist him, he was armed,” said Ba Amsa.
When the Nigerian Army recaptured Bama, Ba Amsa was pregnant. This time she managed to get away. Her son, Abuya, was born in the camp and she was reunited with her parents. Her four siblings – three brothers and a sister – are still missing.
But she dreaded nursing her baby in a hostile environment – both mother and child endured each day on the Dalori refugee camp. The centre for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) fleeing Boko Haram terrorism, located outside the Borno state capital of Maiduguri, was home to over 21,000 refugees from Bama. There, rather than the safety she sought, Ba Amsa faced a new nightmare: fellow IDPs on the camp did not think too highly of former Boko Haram captive wives, like Ba Amsa and the products of their unfortunate relations with members of the terrorist sect.
Ba Amsa frequently relived the dread of having to answer difficult questions from her child. And as if in response to those disconcerting questions, she said, “This child (Abuya) does not even know of its own existence…so he has no blame. All the bad things that happened to me are because of his father, not him. This child is innocent.”
Life as social pariah
The Nation findings revealed that communities are wary of accepting children sired by Boko Haram fighters. They are scared of reintegrating with their teenage mothers and women too – it doesn’t matter that they were abducted, forcefully married and serially raped by members of the terrorist sect. Nobody wants to be seen with offspring and ex-wives of the dreaded terror sect. Thus infant children of Boko Haram fighters and their mothers arriving on IDP camps from newly liberated areas in the northeast face extreme stigmatisation.
Popular cultural beliefs about ‘bad blood’ and witchcraft, as well as the extent of the violence experienced by people at the hands of the terrorist sect form the basis of this fear. This general perception has been exacerbated by stories of women and girls returning from captivity and murdering their parents. Such accounts give rise to the fear that “If we accept sons and daughters of Boko Haram, they (the mothers) may come back to kill us.”
Women and girls who spent time in captivity are often referred to by communities as “Boko Haram wives,” “Sambisa women,” “Boko Haram blood” and “Annoba” (which means epidemics). The description of these girls and women as an ‘epidemic’ reveals fears that their exposure to the terrorist group could spread to others. This infers that these girls and women were radicalised while in captivity, and if allowed to reintegrate into their communities, they might recruit others. However, excluding some cases in IDP camps, communities expressed the belief that over time relations could be rebuilt and that the women and girls could gradually be accepted and trusted by the displaced community.
However, acute fear and suspicion persist of children born of sexual violence, whose fathers are believed to be Boko Haram fighters. It is unlikely that such fears and suspicion will decrease, according to Dr. Abubakar Monguno of the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID). Monguno, working with a team including Dr. Yagana Imam, Yagana Bukar and Bilkisu Lawan Gana from UNIMAID, and in collaboration with the International Organisation on Migration (IOM), the Borno State Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, International Alert and UNICEF, authored a report on the crisis. Findings revealed that hostile perceptions place children conceived of rape and violence on Boko Haram terror camps “at risk of rejection, abandonment, discrimination and potential violence.”
The DRR alternative
It is amid such atmosphere that the Nigerian government runs its De-radicalisation, Rehabilitation and Reintegration (DRR) programme through the military. The DRR programme was established by the federal government in 2015 to deradicalise and reintegrate the ex-Boko Haram fighters into society.
The initiative is a non-military approach meant to bolster counter-terrorism efforts and complement the military’s firepower in the northeast.
In an effort to deliver on its promise to eliminate terrorists in the north-eastern region, the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration made changes to the country’s security architecture. These included redesigning the national security corridor. It also led to a new de-radicalisation, rehabilitation and reintegration programme.
Code-named “Operation Safe Corridor”, the programme identified two categories of defectors: “high-risk” and “low-risk”. High-risk defectors, considered to be the most hardened fighters, would be prosecuted even after defecting. The low-risk were categorised as those with a less vicious record. The plan was that they should undergo an intensive de-radicalisation, rehabilitation and reintegration programme.
The exercise mapped out was a 52-week programme. It included de-radicalisation therapies, vocational training and basic education. Religious re-education before reintegration into the society was also included.
The programme is undertaken in two different rehabilitation camps: a camp in Mallam Sidi, Gombe State and the Bulumkutu Rehabilitation Centre in Maiduguri, Borno State.
The Mallam Sidi camp was established for male defectors while the Bulumkutu camp in Maiduguri is for women and children.
In 2016, a presidential directive established Operation Safe Corridor (OSC), a national rehabilitation and reintegration program for repentant, surrendered ex-combatants affiliated with Boko Haram or ISWAP. Led by the civilian Office of the National Security Advisor (ONSA), the military is the de-facto lead of the OSC. By September 2018, the government endorsed a national Action Plan that consists of four pillars of efforts including Legal and Policy Issues, Technical Support to the Government, Individual Case Management, and Community-based Reintegration and Reconciliation.
About 559 repentant Boko Haram members recently graduated from the DRR programme and each beneficiary swore an oath of allegiance to the federal government of Nigeria during the event which held in Gombe State.
Speaking at the programme, Joseph Maina, coordinator of Operation Safe Corridor, said over a thousand ex-Boko Haram fighters have graduated from the programme and reintegrated into society.
Maina said the graduating class arrived at the DRR camp between July 15 and September 6, 2021.
He said the repentant fighters went through various rebuilding activities of the programme and had successfully undergone a series of medical screening, psychological and psychospiritual counselling, sports therapy, drug abuse counselling, western education and vocational training.
“Since September 2015, the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari established the Operation Safe Corridor to encourage willing and repentant Boko Haram members to surrender and go through a well-structured rehabilitation and deradicalisation and reintegration programmes,” he said.
According to him, “This programme began effectively in 2016 by the committee constituted by the chief of defence staff to operationalise the mandate of the commander in chief.
“Consequently, personnel were drawn from the 17 services, ministries, departments and agencies to execute the concept of operation. Since the DRR camp became fully operational, a total of 1070 ex-combatants have successfully gone through the programme and have been reintegrated into society.”
Adeyemi Yekini, a Major-general who represented Lucky Irabor, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), urged the repentant insurgents to appreciate and reciprocate the confidence reposed in them as “worthy beneficiaries of our DRR programme”.
“As you return to your communities for your integration stage, I urge you all to brace up for the challenges ahead,” said Yekini.
“Some of you will encounter resentment and rejections in your communities but I can assure you, if you remember and practise everything you have learnt during the DRR programme, you will surmount these challenges.
“I urge you to go out there and be worthy ambassadors of Operation Safe Corridor by being law-abiding and responsible citizens.
“Finally, I want to remind you of the consequences of violating the oath of allegiance you have sworn. You must uphold the pledge to be loyal to the federal government at all times and shun all forms of violence and criminality,” he cautioned.
‘Children are like flowers’
It’s a different kettle of tea for returnee captive wives of Boko Haram insurgents as their families and friends have been known to treat them and their children with scorn soon after their rescue or escape from Boko Haram’s terrorist strongholds. Even though girls and women face rejection by their families and communities as well as the trauma of the sexual violence they have experienced, many of them expressed a willingness to keep their children. The majority of the mothers, many of whom were barely teenagers at the time of their abduction by Boko Haram insurgents, are displaying natural affection for their children.
“Children are like flowers. They are like roses. Roses are poisoned with ugliness. The situation in the northeast is too ugly to raise a child. Life here is very ugly. Very, very ugly for the Nigerian child,” lamented Halima Sule, a Borno-based social health worker even as she acknowledged the valour of young mothers duelling both innate grief and external aggression over circumstances beyond their control.
One such mother Hannatu Ahmedu. At 16, was abducted and forcibly married to a Boko Haram insurgent. The forced union produced a child.
“People can think the worst of me, I do not care,” said Ahmedu, “I have this child now and I can only love him and care for him. People want me to dump him. My childhood friend wants me to kill him. If I didn’t abandon him while running in the forest, why should I abandon him now? I can only love him. He’s my destiny,” she said.
Like Ahmedu, returnee Chibok girls: Yama, Luka, Lawal and Ali among others have equally accepted their wards as their “destiny.” They could only love and care of them perhaps all born of rape and sired through forced marriages to insurgents, their mothers would have less cause to worry perhaps or dread the moment they would begin to ask why their neighbours call them ‘bad blood’ and treat them with scorn.
Yama, for instance, has made peace with her fate. She would return to school and become successful in a trade, in order to give her daughters the best life possible.
So doing, she hopes she would have no cause to respond in pain to difficult questions from her wards. Yama may have no cause to couch the sordid details of their conception in a clutter of woe and earnest tears.
Despite her anguish at remembering, she would tell them to ignore hatred and unkind words. She would tell each child that there is a garden in her face where hope blooms. She would never have cause to call them the living proof of her shame.
