A girl, Meenah
Dawah, kidnapped by Boko Haram for 27 months recently told her shocking story to 1Q4 news.
Dawah says she has a baby
which may belong to Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau.
at 17 after being forced to watch her parents being shot dead by the
dreaded sect in her village in Konduga town, northern Nigeria.While in captivity, she had to care for children
born to Boko Haram commanders and members, and would tremble in fear as
she heard girls scream as they were raped, and in some cases watch how
girls were tortured for refusing to change their faith. She described
how on occasions some top leaders of Boko Haram would come, and she was asked to entertain them.
It was on such visits she insists that Abubakar Shekau, Nigeria’s most
wanted man, and Boko Haram leader, slept with her.
“He would just appear from nowhere like a ghost.He seems to be panicking all the time and issuing instructions.
He is a softly spoken man – it is almost as if he whispers, if you are
meeting him for the first time, you would never be scared of him.
But I soon learned that after every whisper something dangerous would
happen somewhere in Nigeria.Depending on the camp, some of the camps
have everything, electricity, water
and television, with different kind of electronics.He once asked me if I
was willing to fight for the cause, to which I answered no, he told me I
could be a fighter and a domestic slave. I didn’t want to speak to him
in case what I said offended him.All it would take was one wrong word
and he would have had me killed. I thought he was drinking or taking
something whenever he came, one could notice maybe he lost men or
something was not right.We moved a lot and depending on the camp, my
role varied, it was so tough travelling around with a baby strapped to
my back. Abu has many kids from many different women.Some of us women
would go to Maiduguri to buy things when we have shortage, and a
commander or two would follow us, and we acted as decoy when villages
are ambushed.I’d be sent in to talk to people,
then they’d move in behind me and start killing.Some of us girls would
also have to carry guns, and often bombs too, there was this girl, she
was forced to carry a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on her shoulder,
then we had few men in that particular camp.”
Meenah managed to escape when she was badly wounded by a bullet, after
the Nigerian army attacked their camp. She was left for dead.The bullet
in her leg was only recently removed at the University of Maiduguri
Teaching Hospital in Borno State.
She has an uncle as a sole surviving relative, and it has not been easy as her uncle has not receive her warmly.
“My uncle will not have me because he is ashamed of my child whose
paternity is not only questionable but is dangerous if it is
Shekau.Before my parents were shot in the attack on our village, my dad
had made plans for me to go and finish my secondary school in Government
Girl Secondary School Shaffa, where we have a distant relative, but she
was also killed in an attack on her way back from a market in that
area.I know I am intelligent and willing to learn, but where do I start
from?”