Defiled and bloody, tethered to a tree, school uniforms ripped: the moment I rescued two girls from Boko Haram
The evil that drives fanatics behind the schoolgirl kidnap
‘The men were insane, unpredictable, and wild’ ‘They shot him dead right in front of me’
everything. I saw his body covered in blood, I backed away, and the men turned their guns on me. They grabbed me roughly and took me outside to a pick-up truck.
Baba, telling his story confidently and lucidly, wants to skate over the details of his two hellish years in the Boko Haram camp in Sambisa Forest. Today there are special forces soldiers swarming over the vast nature reserve and circling overhead in surveillance aircraft.
For this slight boy, there was no such worldwide interest as he scurried back and forth at the command of a ruthless gang dug into woodland far from any help or rescue.
He remembers many of them lived with women who had come voluntarily into the camp. He never saw any girls abducted. This latest phenomenon is unknown to him. ‘There were many abducted boys, but no girls,’ he said. ‘We were all scared to death and had to do whatever we were told – fetch water, fetch firewood, clean the weapons.
‘We couldn’t make friends – you didn’t know who to trust. I was made to sleep next to the Boko Haram elders, the senior preachers. I had no special boss in the camp, I was ordered around by everybody’.
The men prayed five times a day yet would leap on their motorbikes and trucks to carry out killing sprees.
‘I knew they had started out as holy men but now I saw them as criminals, loaded with weapons and ammunition,’ he said.
As he got older, he was taught how to use an AK-47, how to strip it down and clean it, and reassemble it.
He could never understand what drove the men. They did not use alcohol or hard drugs, though he sometimes saw them smoking marijuana. They were monsters and he felt convinced they were mad.
‘They were wild, even when they prayed so loudly in groups together, making us join in. They were insane, unpredictable, and always planning their next attack. I never wanted to be one of them.
‘They slept rough every night, just taking shelter under trees in the rainy season,’ he said. ‘We all wore the same afaraja [the Nigerian long shift and trousers] day and night. We washed them when we could. We slept on mats made of palm leaves, out in the open with the trucks all parked nearby, ready for a hasty move if necessary.’
He said the fear, and the endless boredom, were his worst enemies. ‘They made us work hard so it was easy to sleep. I don’t remember crying through homesickness. I think the night when my uncle was killed in front of me did something to my feelings forever. It seems mindless, but I adapted to my life out there.’
Then came the day when he was given a ‘special’ but sickening task. One of the commanders told him he was going on a journey and would be tested for his loyalty to the group.
‘He brought two of his senior men to stand beside me. He said I would be going with them to my family’s home and I would have to shoot and kill my father.’ Baba had no time to plan. He was sandwiched between the two fanatics as they set off on a motorbike for his village home.
‘I pretended I was willing to do the job. I took the ammunition belt I was handed and clung on as we drove through the rough bush. When we were less than a mile from a nearby village, I threw the ammunition belt to the ground and pretended it had slid out of my hands.
‘They stopped to let me pick it up. Instead, I ran as fast as I could through the undergrowth. I didn’t care about thorns or snakes or anything. They shot at me and I could hear the bullets flying past and hitting the trees, but I was not going to stop for anything. I made it to the village and some kind people let me hide there.
‘The shooting would have been heard by local vigilante groups. I think that is why I wasn’t followed by the men on the bike.’
The next day Baba went home. He saw his grieving parents and siblings for the first time in two years.
‘But I couldn’t stay,’ he said. ‘I was bringing danger to their door and we all knew it.’
Confirmation of that came when Baba soon heard that vengeful Boko Haram chiefs had put a bounty on his head for his defiance of the equivalent of £12,000 – a fortune in the local economy.
‘I took a bus to Damboa, to report to the youth vigilante group,’ he said. ‘I wanted to work with them and I knew I was doing the right thing.’
His family, terrified, abandoned their home soon afterwards and today live in a remote part of Borno, rarely seeing their eldest son. He lives with a cousin who is also under a Boko Haram death threat.
He became a valuable volunteer with the vigilantes. He helps man checkpoints where Baba points out members of Boko Haram to the rest of the team.
But he was soon exposed to brutality of a different kind – this time from the government side. He helped to get one of his captors, a man he only knew as Alaji, arrested and handed to the soldiers.
‘It felt good at first, but then they shot him dead right in front of me,’ he said.
Now joining the patrols armed with a shotgun and machete, Baba has been able to give valuable intelligence to the Nigerian authorities about Boko Haram’s way of life in their camps.
‘By now I have seen this violence many times. It never gets better. It will always be an even worse sight than finding those poor schoolgirls in the forest,’ he says.