Held for months by the federal government and confined to a
house in the capital for the foreseeable future, Amina Ali, a schoolgirl who
was rescued after two years in Boko Haram captivity, may never be the girl she
once was, her mother fears.
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| Amina Ali(left) and Binta Ali (right) |
Amina, one of more than 200 girls abducted from a school in
Chibok in April 2014, and her four-month-old baby were rescued last May near
Damboa in Borno State by soldiers working together with a civilian vigilante
group. After a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, in the hope
she would shed light on the fate of the other kidnapped girls, Amina has since
been held in a house in the capital Abuja for what the Nigerian government has
called a “restoration process.”
But her mother, Binta Ali, who has spent the last two months
in the house, according to the Voice of America (VOA), is concerned about
Amina’s welfare and future. “Before she was kidnapped, she wanted to further her
education,” Binta told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from Chibok, having
briefly returned there to seek medical treatment. “But now she is afraid of schooling, and she wants to be
close to me at home,” said Binta, adding that Amina wants a sewing machine so
that she can start a business making clothes. Binta said she was also worried that her daughter was being
pressured into following Islam, having been forced to convert from Christianity
to Islam by Boko Haram militants during her captivity. “Amina herself does not want to remain a Muslim,” Binta said,
explaining how an Islamic teacher had visited the house several times and told
her daughter to maintain her new faith.
“She did not want to see him,” Binta said, adding that the
teacher had stopped visiting after she complained about him.
Garba Shehu, Buhari’s spokesman, said Amina’s confinement in
the house had nothing to do with religion. Boko Haram kidnapped 219 girls from their school in Chibok,
Borno State, North-east Nigeria, in April 2014, as part of their seven-year-old
insurgency to set up an Islamic state in the north that has killed some 15,000
people and displaced more than two million. Some girls escaped in the melee but parents of those still
missing accused former President Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s then leader, of
not doing enough to find their daughters, whose disappearance sparked a global
campaign #bringbackourgirls.
Binta said she was shocked to hear about the hardships faced
by her daughter as a captive of the Islamist group. Amina and the other girls, starving and with nothing to cook
with, resorted to eating an entire bag of beans and maize raw. “I cannot imagine how a human being can eat raw maize and
beans like a goat,” Binta said. Amina also told her mother how some of the kidnapped girls
had died in captivity, while others suffered broken legs or went deaf after
being too close to explosions. But she pleaded with her mother not to break the
news to the families in Chibok.
“Other parents have been coming to visit me since I
returned,” Binta said. “But I have not told them anything, even though I know
some of those whose daughters have died.”
Despite her fears over Amina’s religion and education, and
uncertainty over when she will be allowed to return home, Binta said she still
had reason to be positive about her daughter.
“She used to be very afraid,” Binta said, explaining how
Amina would talk to herself during the night prior to her kidnap.
“But now she sleeps soundly. She is no longer afraid.”
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