VICTIMS recently rescued from Boko Haram by the Nigerian Army have shockingly revealed that while in captivity they were forced to eat grass and drink urine for days as they fled from the terrorists.  

Over recent weeks, the Nigerian military has enjoyed significant success in driving Boko Haram out of many of its strongholds and rescuing large numbers of women and children held in captivity. Many of them are now being held in makeshift camps dotted around the country, including one huge one in Uhogua community, in Ovia North East Local Government Area of Edo State. 

According to the more than 1,300 victims at the camp acquired by Pastor Solomon Folorunsho, the president of the International Christian Center for Missions, they saw sheer hell while in captivity. A 28- year-old German lady, who identified herself as Linda Shoes, works in the camp, said she left Germany to help humanity in Nigeria and has been moved by the plight of the children. 

Ms Shoes said: “I am working with the children in need here especially from the northeast and so many of them have seen their own parents killed and their families slaughtered. For three weeks they were hiding in the mountains, no food, no water, they ate stones and sand to survive. 

"So many of them, when they came here, the clothes they wore were the same clothes they fled with the day Boko Haram came. No pants, nothing on their feet and some even came here naked." 

Due to lack of funds to build big and modern halls, the children are housed in wooden structures and uncompleted buildings. There is a section where chicken pox victims are quarantined and they only move to where others are housed when they are certified okay by volunteer doctors and nurses who routinely come from the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Faith Medical Complex and the Catholic Church in Benin. 

One of the victims, 10-year-old Esther Habila who weeps endlessly while at the camp, was said to be a special case. According to one of the missionaries who works there, she saw her parents murdered in front of her. 

“She spent one month and two weeks with Boko Haram in Gwoza, Borno State and then escaped with some people and they trekked to Cameroun for four days and then to Yola. Her parents were butchered in her presence, so the trauma has been there and she hardly talks, just cries and screams." 

Most of the kids at the camp are either orphans or have lost contact with their parents as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast. However, the missionaries have already registered several of them to sit for the Senior School Certificate and National Common Entrance examinations.