My Boko Haram experience
On July 26, 2009 - the day the Boko Haram saga unfurled simultaneously in Bauchi and Maiduguri - my wife and children were on their way from Abuja, through Jos, to Bauchi. Their final destination was Maiduguri. They were unaware of the impending skirmishes to occur that day between security men and the Boko Haram elements in Bauchi on their route, and at their destination, Maiduguri. My wife was going back to Maiduguri where she was the head of the Ministry of Women Affairs. She had been on a weekend visit to the family’s homestead in Abuja and was taking some of the children who were on holidays with her.
Both my wife and I were born and raised in Maiduguri and had been civil servants there. We had moved to Abuja at the turn of the millennium. I came on transfer to the Federal Civil Service and she tagged along to work in the Borno State Governor’s Lodge, Asokoro. When eventually she was promoted she moved back to Maiduguri, thus setting the stage for our constant shuttle to and from Maiduguri.
The infamous day was a Sunday, and I was holed up in my office somewhere in the administrative wing of the Presidential Villa, my place of posting, poring over files to prepare for the week ahead. I was also, keenly following the movement of my family, on phone, through the route they took: Abuja-KeffiBarde-GidanWaya-Forest-VomJos-Bauchi, etc. As sojourners it was always frightful travelling on that route, particularly the stretch from the vicinity of Vom to Kuru, through Bukur and traversing the length of Jos city, where many innocent lives were lost due to the social disturbances prevalent to that area in that period.
When eventually I heard that they were at the tip of Tilden Fulani, a village just a few kilometres out of Jos, I heaved a sigh of relief. I thought the worst part of the journey was over.
I lost concentration on their movement until I heard a report, an hour or two after, over the BBC Hausa afternoon service, about an ongoing fight between security forces and religious fanatics in Bauchi. I immediately became alarmed because I knew the ramifications of such fights and the collateral damage it engendered. We had once lived through the Maitatsine bloody clashes in Maiduguri in 1982, and I could vividly recall the carnage we witnessed. I tried getting my wife on the phone to put her on the alert, but there was no contact.
I looked for information from all the usual sources and they all confirmed my fears that a serious fight was going on in Bauchi, and indeed, it was with religious fanatics. I became frantic, phoning intermittently until after what seemed like a very long time my wife called to say they were getting out of Potiskum, which is some 200 kilometres away from Bauchi. I enquired from her if she noticed anything unusual when they were passing through Bauchi; she replied in the negative. I heaved another sigh of relief and went back to my files. That was past 4pm. Some moments before the call for the maghrib prayers when I was preparing to leave the office, I had a call from Maiduguri coming from a friend living in the state low-cost estate intimating that a confrontation was going on between one of the influential Mallams and security men.
The Mallam, known for incendiary sermons, had carved out an enclave for himself in Galadima ward, near the railway station, adjacent to the state lowcost estate, where he built his residence and a mosque with a string of homes for his numerous acolytes. I had recently seen a congregation of his followers in the night in the vicinity of Mai Saje’s mosque near the zoo in the GRA. I cannot recall the occasion, but I remember seeing them milling around, most of them on motor- cycles, all in similar gears meant to intimidate; white dresses, distinctive short trousers, donning weird turbans and sporting grassy long beards. Their brushes with the police were stuffed with legends meant to enhance their group’s unassailability.
I became more worried and rushed to inform my wife, but they were probably getting to the end of their journey through Jakana, Mainok and Auno, a string of villages in the outskirts of Maiduguri, where phone services were very poor. By the time we spoke, they were already crossing Bullumkuttu in the suburbs of Maiduguri, and I realised that they were still not aware of the enormity of what had happened in their wake, or what was developing in Maiduguri.
By the time they drove into the GRA where our home was situated, the conflagration that was raging in the railway/lowcost estate zone had engulfed much of the northern parts of