IDP kids: Our Boko Haram stories

An eight-year-old stands in the afternoon heat that is common to northern Nigeria, narrating her unique, near-death ordeal with insurgents in quite the same way her age-mates elsewhere in the country are recounting a thriller they have just seen. As tears well up in the eyes of the listening adult, the child becomes the former. […]

An eight-year-old stands in the afternoon heat that is common to northern Nigeria, narrating her unique, near-death ordeal with insurgents in quite the same way her age-mates elsewhere in the country are recounting a thriller they have just seen. As tears well up in the eyes of the listening adult, the child becomes the former. Reaching out, she says: “Don’t worry aunty. I am okay and happy my parents are with us now.”
Internally displaced, always ready to run at a moment’s notice, yet holding on to a semblance of a childhood as only children can. This is how children like Lucy Mathew have been forced by the circumstances around them to become adults overnight in order to survive.
Inside the premises of St Theresa Cathedral, children remain children; running all over playing football with balls made from all sorts of debris—trashed sacks, several polythene bags strewn together. They kick these about in goal posts marked by stones. The children here have ample free time; but schooling is more or less on hold.
Beneath the joyful sounds when a team scores and the excitement of the play are hearts laden with grief from the experiences they have encountered while running away from the terror unleashed by Boko Haram.
Ten-year-old John Mathew, who was in Primary Four when crisis broke in his Madagali community, said he didn’t remember the exact date the incidence occurred but gave a vivid account of it all.
He said: “We were rearing cattle when the village was attacked, and they (insurgents) carted the animals. I immediately ran away with others who were also on their farms until we got to Uba village. That too was attacked, and we ran to Mubi.
“Mubi too was attacked and we ended up here. We made all these journeys by foot. And it took us about a week to cover it. We spent two days in the bush before reaching Uba. We couldn’t even sleep because it wasn’t a familiar place and we were all overwhelmed by fear. It was as if they would come to attack us if we shut our eyes,” he said.
With an attitude suggesting he was resigned to fate, John added: I don’t know where my parents are till date. I heard my mother is in Mbutuku, but the village was attacked not too long ago. So I don’t know her fate now.”
When asked how he coped with the weather at that time of the year and a lack of food, his eyes popped wide open, seemingly at the ridiculousness of the question. “There was tension everywhere; nobody to cook food for anybody or anybody selling anything.”
He said his experiences didn’t tally with the consistent lessons his parents taught him about obedience and the need to study hard and make good grades and play less.
Matthew, whose favourite subject in school whilst he attended was Mathematics, said his ambition was to become a policeman. Until then, the utmost question on his mind is on the whereabouts of his parents and siblings. “I haven’t seen them since that day we were attacked.”
He added that: “This is the first time I am staying anywhere outside my village. It feels very unusual for me. I felt a lot freer at home where I was with my family.”
People running, houses and churches on fire, masked men with bandanas on bikes and Hilux trucks carrying riffles, seen only in movies before now, have become a near daily encounter for Nigeria’s North-East children.
Not related to John, Hannatu Mathew, 12, and her sister, Lucy, 8, shared their experiences.
The duo, who had returned home from school, went grazing their father’s goats when, all of a sudden, they saw people running.
Hannatu said: “Nobody told us what was happening. We finished grazing, returned home in the evening and locked the goats up in their pen before going in.
“Inside the house we met some people whom we thought were soldiers. We stayed there with them, not realising that they were insurgents. At night they woke us up and asked for the rest of the family. We told them we didn’t know. They asked if we had eaten or had any water, and we told them no. They left us alone and went outside, saw the goats, about 120 of them and began jubilating that they had found meat. My younger sister suddenly exclaimed to me, ‘My sister we are dead. It’s this people!’  She advised that we should escape. I pushed her over the fence before jumping over it myself.
“We ran all the way to Mbutuku, and luckily, we found our mother and began another run from there until we got to Yola after three days. We passed several villages but have no recollection of them. The insurgents tried several times to capture us. I was shot at twice, but for some reason I was unhurt. There were so many of them at our house who had come with their vehicles and motorbikes. It was impossible to count them all. And their faces were covered,” she said pensively.
In all that time, the constant fear of the possibility of meeting them again and being killed as they ran, was utmost on the Primary Six pupil’s mind. “We were also worried about the rest of our family and wondered if they would run into them in our house as we did unknowingly,” she said.
A typical day for her in the village after school hours was to have lunch and take the goats for grazing and come back home and go to bed. “I miss all of that,” she mused.
Turning to our reporter as if back to reality, she said: “I am still wondering where these people came from and why there is the need for them to do all these killings. Also, the military are killing them but they are not finishing. I just wonder!”
Responding to what she thinks of her experiences and having to go through them so young, with a shrug she answered: “I watch TV, I see children in other places and I know this is not what my life should be like at this stage.
“No. It’s too much for me. I saw so many things and I know I shouldn’t see them. Nobody should see them. I’m too young. I should have been experiencing a happier life and environment,” Hannatu said.
On the effect it has had on her, she said: “The slaughtering of human beings like goats is something I cannot get over. When I remember, I’m cold. That is something I wish I never saw. I saw many killed; people who have done no wrong. I wish I didn’t see these happen.”
A shy Lucy, biting her finger nails while preparing to speak to out reporter, said with a smile as she looked away: “I will talk. I knew it was them because their faces were covered and their heads tied with small scarves (bandanas).”
On her courage to advise her older sister to escape, the witty child said: “We have been hearing about them and how they kill people anyhow, anyhow. When I saw them, I recognised them from the description of what I had heard people say. I thought to myself that if really they kill people, then they will kill us too.”
Just as tears swell up in our reporter’s eyes, she smiles, one finger still in her mouth as she bites away and says: “don’t worry aunty, I am fine. Our parents are with us now;” and in a response typical to that of a child her age she adds, “And we have food to eat.”
“But two of our uncles were slaughtered and one of their wives taken away by Boko Haram. We still don’t know where she is,” Hannatu chipped in.
The horror still lingers as the youngsters are not enthusiastic about going home. They chorus: “We’re still scared. Even if they ask us to go back home we worry that it will happen again. It is as if they are still there.”
Mercy Apagu lived in Gulak with her blind grandmother who had recently given her N10, 000 to save for her.  But in escaping the insurgents all she took with her was her baptismal card.
She narrated her ordeal: “After they came into Gulak, we ran into the bush where we spent one week without food or drink. We got hungry and wanted to come out in search of food at home. On the way, we stumbled on them. But we ran away to a hill and tried to hide there. They fired gunshots and when we wanted to run to a safer place, they found us out and captured us. They took us to a house, which for them, is a prison for women captives.”
On her escape she said: “On the day some of us escaped, we had been assigned to do the cooking. Then they called all the women for karatun alo (Qur’anic studies). We complained that we were to cook. They gathered the other women and kept them in a room and began their classes. That’s when we seized the opportunity. So we threw a blanket over the electric fence and jumped over it. Just as we were running away, we came across another set (Boko Haram) who asked where we were going. We told them that we were their brothers’ wives and wanted to go visiting some other women.
“Our intention was to come to Yola. We didn’t know which way to go, but decided to forge on as long as we left that vicinity. In the process we met other women whom we told we wanted to go to Paraku. The women advised us not to follow the main road but go through the bushes and foot paths because they constantly raided the area. No sooner had we left the women than we saw them advance towards us on their bikes. We immediately did a dive into the bushes nearby and started again after they had left.  Eventually, we arrived Paraku and passed the night there, but in the bushes. We were advised against sleeping inside any house or building because these were usually the first things to be razed down by the insurgents.
“For some reasons, the only thing I was able to escape with was my baptismal card. I picked it because my belief is that everything in this word is vanity. If it got burnt in a fire I would be sad,” the 16-year-old said.
Did she imagine that she would survive? “Never! Those people are very dangerous. I just decided to take the risk. While we were captured they warned us that if anyone of us escaped and was caught, she would be killed. They showed us videos and photos of escapees and threatened us. I felt it was the same thing. There was no assurance of life either way.
“I had wanted to become a medical doctor. I still hope to do so regardless of the setback. I was in SS1 and I feel sorry for the person who was sponsoring me,” Apagu said.
In tears, holding back an outburst she said: “If my father were still alive he would have paid for me to be taken away from the town and brought to Yola. His absence makes me suffer.  
“I’m not optimistic they will survive because I heard another rumour that more women were captured from my area. I know that all women below 50, whose husbands are not around, are forced to marry the insurgents. I was told my elder sister has been married off to one of them.”
Eighteen-year-old Guodia was an SS2 student at Government Day School, Shuwa. She was captured after three days of trekking to Kudzum. “We were asked to convert to Islam, otherwise they would marry us and take us to Sambisa where we would be slaughtered. They took us to a man, Joseph’s house, Star Blue, and told us that on Friday they would convert us to Islam.
“Some of us Christians came together in prayers and the Muslims did the same. They went out, got the food and brought it to us to cook. Women who refused to cook were beaten,” she said.
Adding that: “After two weeks there with at least 40 women and some men, one night  they went to mosque and we escaped from the house because the wall had collapsed.
“I had lost both parents by this time and I didn’t have any money. I miss my home. I miss not going to school. I loved health science classes. I miss my siblings. Our only brother died in the insurgency. My sisters are scattered all over – one in Lagos, one in Abuja and the last still in Madagali. It hurts to live this way; to see your brother being killed,” she muttered as tears flowed freely down her cheeks.
Matter-of-factly, Hannatu Mustafa, 13, from Lassa said: “The insurgency made me leave my father’s house. We were working on our farmlands when the insurgents came on motorbikes and began shooting at us. We narrowly escaped.”
She said: “For seven days we were on the run, trekking from Lassa to Draku. In all that time, the only thoughts on my mind were on my mother. My father had been killed by them already. Thankfully, my mother and I reunited here at the camp (Damarre).”
Mustafa’s utmost desire is to go back to school and have the kind of life she once wished for.
Rahima Abdulkarim, 12, said: “The insurgency sent us out of our homes to this camp. It was a normal day at home, with us enjoying as a family when we heard Michika had been attacked and we fled. While running, we heard sporadic shooting and sped up, trying to get to Jos by foot. Somehow we ended up in this Damarre camp.”
The youngster from Michika said: “I miss not going to school at home; all I want is to go back home and continue with my education there. Even though I’m in school here at the camp. The environment is not the same.”
At the various camps, there are efforts by various officials to ensure that the children don’t miss out on the school curriculum.
Bishop Stephen Mamza of the Yola Catholic Diocese said: “What we did was that IDPs residing within the cathedral are enrolled at our Centre for Christian Religious Instruction (CRI), nursery and primary school.
“We were able to recruit from the IDPs, some teachers to teach there as well as create more classrooms. With the tension in the North, especially with the coming elections, many parents have withdrawn their children and gone back to the East. That gave some of our IDPs the opportunity to fill up the spaces,” he said.
Mamza added: “We have made arrangements for those who live outside to be enrolled in government-owned schools. This is becoming very difficult because the government promised they would provide the necessary facilities for the children to be enrolled but haven’t done that. They promised that the children would be registered for WAEC, but they haven’t done that. They asked that the children be registered in the nearest school to them.”
He continued: “Unfortunately, when we take them there we are told there are no desks, chairs or other materials.”
Beyond taking care of their educational, feeding and shelter needs, is the fact that the children need counselling, having gone through the experiences they have.
During one of the evening classes our reporter visited, a teacher, Judith, tried to excite the children with more fun ways to applaud themselves and learn the alphabets. As soon as this was over, forlorn looks took over the faces which were only seconds before filled with cheerfulness and laughter.
“They are still visibly and psychologically terrified and are lost a lot of the times in their thoughts,” said, Mr. Lawarence Umar, a principal of Government Junior Secondary School, Maiwandu, in Madagali.
Sighting an instance, he said: “When a tyre burst during one of their classes, they screamed and echoed that Boko Haram had come after them. We had to let them know that all was well. Because we weren’t panicking, they calmed down.”

Rehabilitation—the Rwandan connection
Fr Maurice Kwairanga, who has worked closely with the IDPs since September 2014, said a noticeable sign from the kids is withdrawal syndrome and loneliness. In order to manage it, the kids are engaged in peer groups play and other recreational activities like music and dance, he told Sunday Trust.
Mamza added that: “This has been a major challenge. We don’t have experts to take care of traumatised children. To counsel them has been a big issue. At a certain stage, those who were seriously traumatised, had to be sent to Abuja or Jos for counselling. We’re hoping that with time we’ll get experts in the field who will be willing to come around to help us.
“We had some assistance from the Daughters of Charity based in Port Harcourt, who spent about two weeks. They did their best, but as soon as they left, we were left with the challenge.”
Asma’u Joda, founder of Centre for Women and Adolescent Empowerment, a non-governmental organisation, corroborated this: “We began talking to a group and were told they were psychiatrists. We don’t believe that psychiatrists can deal with this. They could even make it worse.”
“In the end, through the president of the American University, some Rwandese came to help. We were happy because they have had a similar experience. They pointed out to us that we needed to first train them to be lay counsellors before they are trainers of trainers. We were reluctant to get teachers or doctors and nurses because it’s not about teaching, and you cannot follow the medical regime for this kind of situation.”
She argued that: “An essential difference is that when you are a medical personnel you are the one on the driving seat, but that’s the reverse in this case. The victim is on the driving seat. Even the words they use.
“The nurses are fine, they are coming up but it’s also like prescribing. Every two weeks we talk with the lay trained counsellors, and every time they come they are so uncertain if they did the right thing. We make them understand that as long as someone is willing to come back to you after one session means you have done well.
With over 30 IDPs in her house, Joda said: “The Rwandese have told us that we’ll need to train them to be peer counsellors to support themselves. We’ve been doing this and are now trying to get the right people to support them with this.
“Our cultures are very difficult. If you’ve been raped, for instance, it’s very difficult to tell people you’ve been raped. We think the first step is to get the lay counsellors to encourage the people to talk, and when they do, you can refer them to the appropriate channels for their needs,” she said.