Artificial limbs give hope to Boko Haram amputees

Kano, Nigeria, May 7: 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 Orthopaedic Hospital in the northern city of Kano.

“These are my first steps on two legs in two years and I feel like a toddler learning to walk,” he added, looking down at his new plastic leg outside a prosthetics workshop.

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 jihadist violence, now in its ninth year, has killed at least 20,000 people and left thousands of others with life- changing 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.”

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

THE ICRC set up limb- fitting workshop at the hospital in August 2016 to provide prosthetics to amputees from 3 northeastern states worst hit by the Islamist insurgency