Photo credit, Unicef
Feature
By Yemisi Lanre-Idowu
Published by uncovered.ng
Lagos, Nigeria, Aug.3, 2022 – Banditry has taken a new dimension. Rather than sticking to the business of collection of ransom from their victims, the bandits now rob their female victims of their future.
Reports have it that about thirteen girls of the abducted students of Federal Government College, Birnin Yauri, Kebbi state have been married off by some of them.
uncovered.ng sought to fact check this and spoke with security expert and intelligence gatherer, Sam M. He was able to confirm this facts.
What do you say to this latest that bandits are now marrying the girls and in fact impregnating them? How true is it?
Yes, this is true and very sad. This is what usually happens when they kidnap young women. This is what they do. This same thing happened with the Chibok girls and of course the Dapchi girls. Leah Sharibu I was told by a very reliable source was married to Abu Musa Al-Banawi, the other faction of Boko Haram and now stronger faction in fact.
Some of the girls are already pregnant and some of their parents told me that the kidnappers showed them footages that their daughters are already married.
That’s to tell you that there is no difference between these bandits and Boko Haram because they are behaving the same way. They see women as part of the spoils of war. And when negotiations drag on and on, then this sort of thing is what happens. Because those children were kidnapped June 17, 2021 and as we speak there are still about 14 of them left with the bandits including a boy. So they targeted the girls, got them pregnant. In fact so wicked were these guys that they sent three girls back to their parents already pregnant. Is difficult to take this kind of nonsense going on in our country, it is extremely difficult, because I ask myself that as a parent how would I feel if this sort of thing happened to my daughter.
Should the school where the students were kidnapped that last June, have been on or opened at that time?
That school shouldn’t have been open at that time. I understand that the state government spoke with the Federal authorities to allow them shut the school but the Federal authorities kept saying that the exams were here and let them finish the exams. This same thing happened in Chibok, Borno state where over 200 girls were abducted. It was the same mistake made. We never learn. The exams that they sat for in Chibok should have been taken at the state capital. But sometimes we deceive ourselves that if we have about 10 soldiers guiding a place, that is security. Do we know how many fighters the terrorists are bringing? Because that was the mistake made at Chibok. At Chibok, the school was protected but by how many soldiers? Soldiers who were simply overrun by Boko Haram fighters carrying the same weapons that they were carrying but in terms of numbers, they were dozens more than the soldiers that we put there. So since we don’t know how many of those fighters are coming, we don’t need to take that risk. Shut the school and let the students go and take the exams somewhere else. Look at the lives of those girls in ruins now. Is it a crime to go to school?
But is this a new development by the bandist?
By the bandits, Yes, but for Boko Haram, not really. It dates far back in 2015 when the army themselves said that out of 234 female captives rescued by them, 214 were said to be pregnant. It tells you the monster that has confronted us. These girls are been raped and turned to sexual slaves. It is terrible and they can hardly recover from this. The dead Boko Haram leader, Shekau has boasted about it and the army and government claimed it was a lie. But now, the result is what we are seeing as they are coming out now. So it is obvious that the bandits are an offshoot of the terrorists.
The acts of the bandits as we see it now, is it getting worse or abated?
This thing is getting worse. Somewhere in Kebbi South, in the same local government where they killed people, a wedding was taken place and the bandits heard drumming, you know frenzied drumming associated with happiness at a wedding venue, they moved to the venue and took away the bride, the bride groom and the wedding guests. As we speak, they have not contacted the families of the victims. And this is their style, they will not contact anybody for some time so that you are worked up, you are apprehensive and your dam of emotions is about to break and that is when they will ask for a certain amount of ransom. From N100 million upward. It is crazy.
