Despite being forced to flee their homes, locals in Borno IDPs camps remain vulnerable to deadly raids by terrorists.
Dona Isa, 25, fled Boboshe, his home town when the Boko Haram insurgency blew off years ago. He had since been living in an informal IDPs camp. He would later be kidnapped on his farmland, a few steps away from the camp.
“The abductors showed up on our farmland with sophisticated weapons, questioning me and my companions, ” Isa narrated in HumAngle’s Vestiges Of Violence. “They asked us our names, whether we had phones and where our phones were. They then tied our hands behind our backs and hauled us far into the bush. They later contacted our families and demanded a ransom of N500,000 each, phone batteries and food.”
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While in captivity, Isa explained that the terrorists sometimes starved them and also threatened to kill or recruit them.
“They claimed they were doing the work of God. That they are jihadists,” Isa added.
Three days after their abduction, the terrorists announced that a group of three women had delivered their ransom.
Koshi Ibrahim, one of the women who delivered the ransom said they also delivered cooked food and phone batteries.
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“I was very scared when I saw them. They were hairy, huge and they smelt unpleasant. Most of them wore camouflages and others plain clothes,” she recalled.
She added that despite delivering the ransom, the kidnappers refused to release the victims until two days later.
