More than four months after dozens of
schoolgirls were seized from their dormitory in Chibok, a sleepy
community in Borno State, by the Boko Haram insurgents, fear is still
the order of the day for many residents of the area. While some have
remained in the community to pick what is left of their lives, others,
for fear of being killed, have simply relocated to other parts of the
state or found new homes far away from the volatile North Eastern region
of the country. For scores in these categories, life has lost its
meaning.
“The escalating spate of violence by the
militants made us run away from our village to Lagos. My parents
advised us not to come back because they are afraid we could be killed
by Boko Haram,” he said.
Since arriving in Lagos in search of
lush and sparkling pastures, things have not completely gone well for
the siblings. Though working as a driver in a part of the fast-paced
city, Emmanuel and his brothers are still struggling to make ends meet.
The safety of their parents, two sisters and relatives back home in
Chibok constantly troubles their minds. But the death of their brother,
Martins, spilled salt upon an already bleeding wound.
In a rare encounter with our
correspondent in Lagos last week, Emmanuel, who lost four of his
relatives to the April 14 abduction of over 200 schoolgirls by the
insurgents, said, “Martins wanted to become great in life. He was hard-
working and was focused on his future. But he was killed a day after he
visited our parents in Chibok after nearly two years since we moved down
to Lagos. We tried to persuade him not to go but he would not listen.
He said he had missed our mother and that he wanted to see her at all
cost. It was a few days later that our father called to inform us of his
death.
“Last week my father also called that
they had been sleeping in the bush because armed men were always coming
to terrorise the community towards evenings. They have been living in
fear for several weeks now. We are only hoping in God for their safety.”
He said the persistent attacks on his
hometown and the dwindling peace in the region killed his dream of
pursuing higher education at the University of Maiduguri where he once
hoped to study accountancy. The situation leaves him deeply agitated.
Gabriel Mark (not real names) also had a
touching story to tell when our correspondent met him last week in
Lagos. Like Emmanuel and his siblings, he fled Chibok when the attacks
assumed a deadlier dimension. Apart from losing five of his sisters to
the infamous abduction, his entire farmland and life’s savings have all
gone up in flames. He is afraid for his wife and children back in the
community.
“As soon as you wake up in the morning,
nothing comes to your mind than where you and your family would sleep
when night falls,” he said.
“You cannot even think of what you would
eat, it is where you and your family will spend the night that would be
your major concern.”
He added, “When they come to operate,
they don’t kill women, they face the men and young boys and kill them
all. No matter how small a boy is, they would remove him from his
mother’s back and kill him. So, our fear is that there is nowhere to
hide or sleep. I have four children in Chibok. I am afraid for them but
there is nothing I can do. The terrorists have taken sleep away from our
eyes.”
Unable to get a decent job since he found his way to Lagos a few months ago, Mark is still hoping for the best.
Accepting only to speak to our
correspondent after he was assured his identity would be protected, the
33-year-old father of four said he had yet to get over the shock of
witnessing many senseless Boko Haram killings in his native Chibok town.
He narrated some of his scary experiences back home before making the long journey to Lagos.
He said, “On July 20, which was on a
Sunday and at a time when Christians were in the church, the militants
came into the community and killed more than 70 men worshipping in one
of the churches. We the youths quickly gathered ourselves to face them
but we did not have the kind of weapons with which to confront them.
They burnt houses and destroyed so many other things that day.
“There was a particular young man who
could not walk for about three months as a result of chronic waist pain
and on that Sunday he insisted on going to church. When the attackers
came, he was the first person to run out of the church. I don’t know how
he did it but he managed to escape. When his father heard the news, he
rushed to the scene to save his son but as soon as he got there, he was
killed. His son survived but the father died. I cannot forget that day.”
Since the girls’ abduction, there have
been numerous versions of what really transpired on the night of April
14, 2014. While some have blamed the authorities of Government Girls’
Secondary School for the incident, others pointed to the lack of
adequate security in the area as the cause. Mark, who was in the
community at the time, described what that day looked like.
“On the night the girls were kidnapped
nobody expected it. Before the terrorists came into Chibok, they had
passed through a village called Bolakle. The people there called the
chairman of Chibok to inform him that the militants were coming and that
everybody should get ready and team-up to defend the place.
“Immediately they arrived at Chibok,
they started shooting up and all the soldiers fled. It was only one
soldier that stayed back and faced them. He and one other vigilante man
killed about five of the terrorists but their colleagues took their
bodies away. Everybody ran out of the town.
“My sisters were in the school at that
time and so when I called to find out how they were coping, they told me
that they were trapped and there was no way they could escape. I
advised them to sneak to the back of the school and try to jump over the
fence and escape into the bush. But already the Boko Haram members had
surrounded the school premises so there was no way for the girls to
escape. They deceived the girls that they were the soldiers sent to
Chibok to take them to a safer place. That was how they took away all
the girls in a truck.”
He added, “The driver of the truck who
is from Chibok spoke our local dialect to some of the girls that as he
was moving, he would slow down as soon as he approached any bad portion
of the road and that the girls who could jump should do so and run into
the bush. That was how some of the girls managed to escape that night.
“We know some of the Boko Haram fighters
because they used to be part of our communities. Shekau is from
Maiduguri. Those who know him very well say he has always been a very
stubborn person. They say he used to go to graveyard to sleep and it is
from that time that his mind has become evil.
“The traditional ruler has been having
meetings with the indigenes and it is from those meetings that a local
vigilante was formed to protect the community. There are military men
but they are not doing the work they are supposed to do. It is not just
to sit there and when Boko Haram comes you run. That is not how to
protect the people. It is only the local vigilantes that have been
protecting Chibok now.”
Attempts to rescue the kidnapped girls
from Boko Haram’s den since April 14 have failed to yield any fruitful
result. Intelligence support from Western nations to help the Nigerian
military locate and successfully free the young girls have not
translated into any gain.
According to reports, many of the girls
have been converted into sex slaves while some are already believed to
have been used for suicide bombing operations in recent weeks after
their forceful conversion to Islam.
