Artificial limbs give hope to Boko Haram amputees

KANO, Nigeria — Njidda Maidugu breaks into a broad smile as he wobbles on his artificial leg with the support of crutches as a nurse walks alongside, helping him to keep his balance.

Maidugu, 35, never thought he would walk on two legs again after he lost his right limb in a Boko Haram suicide bomb attack at a checkpoint in Maiduguri, northeast Nigeria, in 2016.

“It feels like a miracle to walk with two legs again, I’m happy,” the fuel station attendant said at the National Orthopedic Hospital in the northern city of Kano.

Maidugu was one of about 130 people who lost limbs in Boko Haram attacks and have been fitted with free artificial replacements in a project run by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The ICRC set up the limb-fitting workshop at the hospital in August 2016 to provide prosthetics to amputees from the three northeastern states worst hit by the Islamist insurgency.

The extremist violence, now in its ninth year, has killed at least 20,000 people and left thousands of others with lifechanging injuries.

“Half of the 262 patients we have fitted with prosthetics are (Boko Haram) war victims,” said the head of the project, Jacques Forget.

“The primary focus of the project is to cater for amputees from the conflict, women and children.”

Livelihoods destroyed

The Boko Haram conflict has destroyed the livelihoods of millions of people in a region that was already desperately poor even before the violence began.

Most of the population in northeast Nigeria live on less than $2 a day. That makes prosthetic limbs — which cost on average nearly $700 — prohibitively expensive.

Forget works on an average of five amputees a week, which is just a fraction of the number of those seeking his services.

“There is a massive number of people who need limbs and we would be flooded if we opened our doors to everyone of them,” he said, surveying the stump from Maidugu’s atrophied thigh.

Maidugu heard about the free prosthetics project from a friend who convinced him to try his “luck” despite initial doubts.

With five staff, the workshop struggles to meet deadlines to allow patients to return home within a week.

“It is a huge problem compounded by the conflict,” said Forget.

Despite setting up another limb workshop at Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, in the town of Shika, in neighboring Kaduna state, the demand keeps increasing.

The ICRC plans to open a similar workshop in Maiduguri with construction work expected to start this year in its effort to meet the huge prosthetic demand.

“We are trying to give them a sense of normality, we give them a little quality of life,” said Forget.

We are trying to give them a sense of normality, we give them a little quality of life.”

Jacques Forget, head of the project