A report by Premium Times has detailed how brides of captured Boko Haram terrorists are struggling to adjust to their normal lives before they were abducted by the insurgents.
One of them simply called Aisha recalled the power she wielded as the wife of a leading Boko Haram commander, living in the jihadists’ forest stronghold in the northeast.
Boko Haram brides fear returning to their normal lives without their ’terrorist husbands’
“I had many slaves – they did everything for me,” the 25-year-old said, explaining how women and girls kidnapped by the Islamist militants washed, cooked and babysat for her during the three years she spent in their base in the vast Sambisa forest.
“Even the men respected me because I was Mamman Nur’s wife. They could not look me in the eye,” Aisha said in a state safe house in Maiduguri, where she has lived for almost a year since being captured by the Nigerian army in a raid in Sambisa.
22-year-old Halima recalled the ‘beautiful home’ built by her Boko Haram husband in the Sambisa, and the easy life she enjoyed.
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Trucks arrived regularly with food and clothes, a hospital staffed with doctors and nurses tended to the ill, and Halima was given her own room in the house she shared with her husband.
“Anything I requested, I got,” said Halima, sitting under a tree in the yard and lazily picking her toenails.
Aisha and Halima are among around 70 women and children undergoing a deradicalisation programme – led by psychologists and Islamic teachers – designed to challenge the teachings they received and beliefs they adopted while under the control of Boko Haram.
Around 70 women and children are undergoing a deradicalisation programme in Maidugiri
Thousands of girls and women have been abducted by the group since it began its insurgency in 2009 – most notably the more than 200 Chibok girls snatched from their school in April 2014 – with many used as cooks, slaves, and even bombers.
Some of these women however gained respect, influence and standing within the Boko Haram camp.
Struck by this power, and relieved to escape the domestic drudgery of their everyday lives, these women can prove tougher than men to deradicalise and reintegrate into their communities.
With more women likely to be freed from Boko Haram or widowed as Nigeria’s military strives to defeat the militants, experts say insults, rejection and even violence towards them as they return to their communities could hinder efforts to repair the social fabric of a region splintered by Boko Haram.
Despite being kidnapped by Boko Haram when they attacked her town of Banki four years ago, Aisha was not forced to marry Nur, the suspected mastermind of a bomb attack on U.N. headquarters in Abuja in 2011 that killed 23 people.
Aisha was courted for months and showered with gifts by Nur, who has a $160,000 state bounty on his head, before agreeing to become his fourth wife. When she told Nur to divorce his second wife – because she did not like her – he did so right away.
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The women and girls in the safe house were subjected to nine straight hours of Koranic teaching a day by Boko Haram during their time in captivity in the Sambisa forest.
But Aisha is not worried about rejection or stigma. Her only fear is returning to an ordinary life – one without power.
“Only when you get married to a rich man, or a man of authority, can you get that kind of power, but if I am single yet have plenty of money of my own, I will be fine,” she said.
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