Thirty-one years old Musa was wrongly arrested as Boko Haram Jihadist by Nigerian troops in 2012. Ten years after, his mother, Zainab Idris longs to see him again.
All Zainab has left are memories and a picture of her son, HumAngle documents her travails in one of its series centred around missing people in insurgency-ravaged northeast Nigeria.
Zainab said Musa was 20 years old he was taken away. She insists her son is not a Boko Haram member. According to her, Musa holds a secondary school certificate and had pickup tailoring skills after school.
Zainab bought him a sewing machine and rented a shop to support his business. But Musa’s ordeal started one day in 2012 when he left the house for the market. He would later be arrested and taken into a military detention facility at Giwa Barracks in Maiduguri, Borno State capital.
Since then, Zainab has not set eyes on her son. She learnt that he was taken alongside other persons to the Giwa Barracks and she kept frequenting the place but no one told her the whereabouts of her son.
Zainab told HumAngle that her son is a good boy who never stayed out late he was dedicated to his tailoring job.
Musa has reportedly been seen at various detention facilities, according to the distraught mother but nothing substantial has been established concerning his whereabouts.
The military, according to Zainab, has no moral justification for detaining her son and others for up to 10 years even if they were Boko Haram accomplices, a conclusion she disagreed with; especially at a time when Boko Haram terrorists who have been proven guilty are being left off the hook.
According to HumAngle, Zainab is only one of the hundreds of women whose loved ones have either disappeared or kept in detention facilities after they were reportedly arrested by the Nigerian military.
All Zainab wants is to see her beloved son again.
