A group of young Dikwa girls – who ventured into close-by bushes while looking for firewood and vegetables for soup – were captured by insurgents, believed to be from the Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’way Wa’l-Jihād (JAS), and kept for 10 days in their lair in the forest and were repeatedly raped.

A 15-year-old told RNI reporter Bintu A Goni that the group had gone into the bushes at about 9.30am on a Tuesday to get firewood and vegetables.

They thought they would be safe because there were so many of them.

Some went in different directions and it was a while before they realised they had been separated.

“We were walking together and realised some of the girls were missing. We started looking for them and calling their names. We looked for quite a long time but we couldn’t find them. We thought maybe they had gone home.

“We turned around and started walking home. Suddenly a bunch of Boko Haram [JAS] members appeared in front of us. They called us and asked where we were going. When we told them we were going home, they would not allow us to go further. Instead, they took us with them.

“We walked until we reached the river and they told us to cross to the other side. When we told them we could not, they caried us on their backs and crossed to the other side.”

The traumatised girl said the insurgents took them to a place where there were buildings and tents.

“They made some beans and gave it to us to eat but we refused. One of the insurgents told us that we would not be given food again, even if they kept us captive for two months, if we did not eat what they gave us.

“Shortly afterwards, another group of insurgents came to see us. They asked us where we came from. We told them we were looking for vegetables when a group of their people forced us to come to this place.

They asked us if we wanted to get married but we told them it was not yet time for us because we were too young to get married.

“The men looked at us and said that it was possible for us to marry. They put us inside a room and started to touch our bodies all over. We tried to stop them but they told us they could do anything they wanted to us.

The girl said that about three days later more insurgents arrived.

“They put each of us in the tents and began raping us. There were many of them. We were very sore and could not even stand up so they made us crawl out. We were in pain and very confused. They put us in a room and left us there.”

The girl said about five days later more insurgents came into the camp and they raped the girls too. “Some of us were unconscious. All of us were in pain.”

She overheard the insurgents. “They were speaking to one another and said that if they did not free us, some of us girls might have to be killed.”

Instead, they took us back to the river but we could not cross it because now it was flowing very strongly, so they took us back to the bushes and left us there.

“Many of the girls could not walk properly because of being raped by so many men. We rested for a while and that night we left the bushes. Most of us were crawling, not walking. We spent three nights crawling; mosquitoes, insects and other things kept biting us but there was nothing else we could do. We kept crawling until we reached a place where people could see us.

“It was early in the morning and when the people saw us, they thought we were members of Boko Haram. But we told them that we were the girls from Dikwa Kura who had gone missing.”

The people told soldiers and members of the Civilian Joint Task force, who came to fetch the girls on their motorbikes.

The girls said people from the non-governmental organisation, the Mercy Corps, were waiting for them. They received treatment for their injuries and given injections. One girl, a 13-year-old, was so badly injured that they could not help her in Dikwa and she had to be taken to Maiduguri for treatment.

“Our parents were told we had been found and they were so pleased. They feared we might have been killed.

“They prepared hot water for us and when they saw the condition we were in, they put us in the warm water and massaged our bodies. We are all beginning to recover from our awful ordeal.

“As for me, I still find it painful to stand up. I have severe pain in my abdomen – it is excruciating.

“The experience has traumatised all the girls. Those 10 days were the worst of my life. We kept hearing the sounds of motorbikes in the distance, but no one came to save us. We just cried most of the time.”

The girl said she would advise other girls to never go into the bushes because they might come across the insurgents. She said they should stay close to their parents at all times.

“I don’t want what happened to me to happen to any other girl. It was a traumatic experience that I will never forget. Even now I still have nightmares about it.”

AISHA SD JAMAL