In an exclusive chat with Prince Dickson of IQ4News, Meenah Dawah (not real name) who was a former Boko Haram captive taken by the islamist terrorists over two years ago has revealed how the sect’s leader, Abubakar Shekau sexually abused her and also claimed that she was pregnant for the insurgent.
Dawah who escaped Boko Haram camp earlier this year, was forced to watch as her parents were killed in front of her when the insurgents invaded her village in Konduga town, northern Nigeria. After 27 months under Shekau she escaped their camp when it was invaded by military forces and now claims she is carrying Shekau’s child.
She recalled how she would hear different girls scream as they were raped and was sometimes made to watch how girls were tortured for refusing to change their faith to Islam and also claims she would be randomly visited by Boko Haram commanders for sex and during one of such visits she was visited by Abubakar Shekau, who had sex with her.
“He would just appear from nowhere like a ghost. He seems to be panicking all the time and issuing instructions. He is a softly spoken man – it is almost as if he whispers, if you are meeting him for the first time, you would never be scared of him.But I soon learned that after every whisper something dangerous would happen somewhere in Nigeria. Depending on the camp, some of the camps have everything, electricity, water and television, with different kind of electronics.He once asked me if I was willing to fight for the cause, to which I answered no, he told me I could be a fighter and a domestic slave. I didn’t want to speak to him in case what I said offended him.All it would take was one wrong word and he would have had me killed. I thought he was drinking or taking something whenever he came, one could notice maybe he lost men or something was not right. We moved a lot and depending on the camp, my role varied, it was so tough travelling around with a baby strapped to my back.Abu has many kids from many different women. Some of us women would go to Maiduguri to buy things when we have shortage, and a commander or two would follow us, and we acted as decoy when villages are ambushed.I’d be sent in to talk to people, then they’d move in behind me and start killing. Some of us girls would also have to carry guns, and often bombs too, there was this girl, she was forced to carry a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on her shoulder, then we had few men in that particular camp, ” she said.
Dawah managed to escaped during a raid on a Boko Haram camp and had to seek safety after she was shot in the leg. The bullet in her leg later removed at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital in Borno State. She has an uncle who is her sole relative survivor but claims he will not welcome her.
“My uncle will not have me because he is ashamed of my child whose paternity is not only questionable but is dangerous if it is Shekau. Before my parents were shot in the attack on our village, my dad had made plans for me to go and finish my secondary school in Government Girl Secondary School Shaffa, where we have a distant relative, but she was also killed in an attack on her way back from a market in that area. I know I am intelligent and willing to learn, but where do I start from?” she asked
Boko Haram under the leadership of Shekau, has been blamed for hundreds of other kidnappings, especially women and young girls across the North-East region of Nigeria.
