The Pride of Africa

"Nigeria is facing a demographic tidal wave."
"The long-term viability of the Nigerian economy -- and the state itself -- hinges on the government, religious, and traditional institutions developing a plan to address this challenge before it becomes impossible to remedy."
Matthew Page, associate fellow, Africa Programme, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Britain

"They used car engine belts and electrical cables to flog us."
"Teachers used to sexually harass us -- They tried to loosen my pants once but I fought them off and was beaten."
"They beat us everywhere in the house, even in the mosque. If you asked to speak with your family, they would shackle you."
"When the police raided the school the whole place was in pandemonium, we were so happy."
"What I want now is to return home. I'll be a good boy."
Suleiman, 15, former student, Kaduna Muslim institution

"The teachers and prefects raped boys. Those who were sexually molested were enticed with canned fish. Those of us who refused were caned."
"They used planks of wood to beat us."
Jibril, 17, former student, Kaduna Muslim institution

Television Continental / Reuters TV | People are pictured after being rescued from a building in the northern city of Kaduna, Nigeria, on September 26, 2019, in this grab from a video.

Islamic schools such as the one in Kaduna, Nigeria , called Almajiris, can be found commonly in the mostly Muslim north of Nigeria. According to Muslim Rights Concern, situated locally, an estimated ten million children are sent to attend these Islamic schools. Nigeria's Muslim President Muhammadu Buhari undertook an initiative to encourage school attendance with a program guaranteeing free school meals that 9.8 million children in 32 of Nigeria's 36 states can take advantage of.

Nigeria, with one of the strongest economies on the continent, and a huge population of 190 million people and a wealth of oil resources has been unable to provide adequate school places for its population. That gap is an invitation for unregulated institutions such as the Kaduna institute for religious studies to offer their services to indigent families. Primary education in Nigeria is free officially, but around 10.4 million Nigerian children, five years of age to 14 do not attend school.

The oil producing state of Nigeria whose finances are drained by endemic corruption, spends a mere 0.5 percent of gross domestic product on health for the population, while allocating 1.7 percent on education, representing the lowest worldwide among others, according to the International Monetary Fund. With so few options available to poor families, there are some parents quick to defend the Kaduna institution which charges 35,000 naira ($114) each term.

The pink two-storey building is a prison-like structure surrounded by high walls and barbed wire. It has an imposing gate, with more than a dozen rooms, with small windows for ventilation. Reuters

A tailor living next to the combined mosque/school institution attested that two of his children attending the schools had never been abused. "It was good for them, they became calm. They showed them how to read the Qur'an. I liked it." How to read the Qur'an, but since it is in Arabic, the meaning of the Arabic words which they were then able to quote as required, eluded them. "There is no problem in this school", Zainab, a mother of seven children at the institution where she cooked meals, insisted.

The institute's sign is also in Arabic, describing itself as "House of Imam Ahmad Bin Hanbal for the Application of Islamic Teachings". Some parents paid the fees in the belief it was an Islamic school, describing it as a good institution, dismissing abuse allegations while others saw it as a correctional facility, although it was never formally registered as required, as either. The two-story house used as a religious school is emerging as a place of horror visited upon men and boys, some of whom had been there for years.

Those who managed to escape the prison that the large, complex building represented to return home, were frequently returned by their families with some parents claiming their wayward children required discipline. And then there were other parents who were too poor, they said, to look after all their children. At least 77 boys under 18 years of age were held in the house, the  youngest age five. According to the victims, there were frequent, regular beatings; children and men often shackled.

Some detainees were as young as five years old  Reuters

Food was served at 10 a.m. and 11 p.m. only, and in short supply. Suleiman was sent to the institution by his older brother as punishment for skipping school. He studied Arabic and Islam's holy book, the Qur'an. When he was ten years old, Jibril, now 17 was hung by his arms after attempting to escape. He was left hanging until bones in his shoulders broke. He struggles now, years later, to raise his arms. Directly after the incident he was sent home to recover, and when he had healed his family returned him to the school.

A complaint by an uncle who was denied access to his nephew (a regular feature at the school where family members were not permitted admittance) alerted police who dispatched about 40 officers to raid the building where they found several boys and men in chains. Shackled to broken power generators, some boys dragged them around after themselves, including to bed or to the bathroom. Police arrested seven men they found to be in charge of the place where starving children caught trying to steal food would be stripped and whipped. In total several hundred men and boys were kept prisoner there and subsequently freed.

Only several days later, a house in Lagos was raided by police, where ten young women who had been kidnapped were kept prisoner, raped, to became pregnant and bear children to be sold for profit. How many of such operations exist? When Boko Haram, the Islamist terrorist group, kidnapped hundreds of school girls as 'brides' for their fighters from a private all-girls' school, the country was aghast, and a search for the girls was undertaken by the Nigerian military. Much good came of it.

Four children were rescued along with 19 women

Some of the girls managed to escape, some with babies whom their villages refused to accept. The country, in a sectarian divide between Muslim and Christian, is destabilized by the presence of marauding terrorists who torch villages, slaughter the men and kidnap and rape women, and has created a dilemma for the government whose underfunded and demoralized military would rather flee from confrontation with Boko Haram and other terrorist groups claiming affinity with Islamic State than fight and destroy their ability to terrorize the population..

Dysfunction is so widespread and deep that the presence of international aid agencies and other humanitarian groups trying to provide medical care and food for poor Nigerians is viewed askance; they are are accused by the government of giving aid and succor, along with funding support to the very terrorist groups whose victims they are engaged in offering care to, now finding themselves shut down, declared foreign interventionists causing problems in the country.

Nigeria's Colossal Failure

"[Rain is a creation from god]. Like saying the world is a sphere. If it runs contrary to the teachings of Allah, we reject it. We also reject the theory of Darwinism."
Boko Haram spokesman

"I will not get killed until my time comes. You broadcast the news and published it in your media outlets that you injured me and killed me and here I am."
"Oh tyrants, I'm in a happy state, in good health and in safety."
"If you want your girls, [kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls] bring back our brethren."
Abubakar Sheka, leader, Boko Haram

"Boko Haram is once again committing war crimes on a huge scale, exemplified by the depravity of forcing young girls to carry explosives with the sole intention of killing as many people as they possibly can," 
"This wave of shocking Boko Haram violence, propelled by a sharp rise in suicide bombings, highlights the urgent need for protection and assistance for millions of civilians ... Governments in Nigeria, Cameroon and beyond must take swift action to protect them from this campaign of terror."
Alioune Tine, Amnesty International director, West and Central Africa

"[All praise to Nigerian troops for] finally entering and crushing the remnants of the Boko Haram insurgents at Camp Zero [located deep within  Sambisa Forest]."
"[The] long-awaited and most gratifying news of the final crushing of Boko Haram terrorists in their last enclave [has been achieved] the terrorists are on the run, and no longer have a place to hide."
"Further efforts should be intensified to locate and free our remaining Chibok girls still in captivity. May God be with them."
Nigerian President President Muhammadu Buhar, December 2016

A Nigerian soldier checks a building while on patrol in Duji. Joe Penney, Reuters

According to the latest news out of Nigeria, its military has arrested over 400 people with Boko Haram, living on the islands of Lake Chad; among them jihadis, their wives and children in a two-week operation that wound up with the largest number of Boko Haram fighters arrested in northeast Nigeria in recent months. Yes, it's the very same Boko Haram, the Islamist hard-liners who proudly reject anything Western, from education to science. And no, it doesn't appear that Boko Haram was after all, entirely wiped out as Nigeria's president stated a year ago.

Boko Haram now associates itself with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, calling itself 'Islamic State West Africa Province'. In the Hausa language Boko Haram means 'Western culture is forbidden by Islam'. This does not reflect some new interpretation; it repeats in present-day language what the Koran itself forbids, so it is hardly surprising that Boko Haram's goal is the total Islamification of Nigeria, with the implementation of Sharia law. Nigeria is a hugely populous country in an extremely large geography.

It is comprised of a multitude of regions and various ethnic groups speaking 500 languages such as Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and Urhobo. Sunni Muslims dominate the north of the country while Christians represent the majority in the south. From its colonialist past English remains the common language. The country's geology is one of those in which nature invested great oil wealth. While the current president is Muslim, his predecessor was Christian.

Boko Haram jihadis rampage through towns and villages, ransacking them, torching them, killing the inhabitants, kidnapping women and children. They're not too given to selecting only Christians for their atrocities; Muslims too fall under their marauding attacks. Teens and even younger children make excellent fodder for re-education the Boko Haram way; they are indoctrinated into jihad and persuaded to join; no doubt the examples made of those who protest encourage the others not to.

Women and teens are used unsparingly as suicide bomber fodder; instructed to seek out crowded venues and detonate the explosives belts they're equipped with.Women and girls who have been kidnapped, raped, borne children and who have escaped with those infants are shunned by Nigerian society, by their own families, by their villages; held in suspicion and unconcealed disgust as belonging to Boko Haram.

According to UNICEF, the first half of 2017 saw Boko Haram deploy 83 child suicide bombers, 55 who were girls mostly under fifteen, and one teen-age girl who had a baby strapped to her back, along with a suicide belt.

At 186-million population, the country represents the world's third most populous. It is a corrupt society, with the various appointed governors there to enrich themselves not to represent the best interests of those they govern. The military is traditionally ill equipped and inadequately trained. Funding to ensure that soldiers have the arms required to match those of Boko Haram is scarce; the military elite is known to habitually siphon off needed funds.

A typical African country in so many ways. Since 2009, an estimated 20,000 Nigerians have met violent deaths at the hands of Boko Haram, with over 2.6 million left homeless. Over five million Nigerians are on the verge of starvation; once dependable crops growing on farmland now devastated by the conflict are a thing of the past. Conflict has left farmers unable to plant, let alone cultivate crops, for the last several years.

Nigerian soldiers hold up a Boko Haram flag that they had seized in the town of Damasak, Nigeria in March 2015. (Emmanuel Braun/Reuters)

Exploited, Threatened, Rejected

"As 'suicide' attacks involving children become commonplace, some communities are starting to see children as threats."
"Let us be clear: these children are victims, not perpetrators. Deceiving children and forcing them to carry out deadly acts has been one of the most horrific aspects of the violence in Nigeria and in neighbouring countries."
"This suspicion toward children can have destructive consequences: how can a community rebuild itself when it is casting out its own sisters, daughters and mothers?"
Manuel Fontaine, West and Central Africa director, UN Children's Agency

Women and children rescued from Islamist militant group Boko Haram in the Sambisa forest by the Nigerian military arrive at an internally displaced people's camp in Yola, Adamawa State, Nigeria, on May 2, 2015. There's been a ten-fold increase in child suicide bombers deployed by Boko Haram over the last year, UNICEF says. (Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters)

The abducted, terrorized and exploited children and women whom Boko Haram has spirited away from their communities in tandem with mass murder and the destruction of villages, is sundering familial and clan and tribal relations. When abducted children who have been threatened, starved, violated and abused in every conceivable way manage to escape and return to their home communities they have become ostracized, discovering that they no longer have a place among those who were once their family.

They are distrusted. They are regarded as being no different after their time with the Islamist jihadists than their captors. The fact that these terrified children were exposed to the commission of dreadful atrocities, of threats that they will die if they do not submit, of witnessing the deaths of their friends and comrades, subjected to violence themselves in the process learning to obey to preserve their lives elicits little sympathy from villagers who have themselves often been the subject of Boko Haram's deadly ravages.

All the more so as the jihadist group has embraced the utility of using children as suicide bombers in ever greater numbers. Little wonder that communities that have suffered death with the advent of child suicide bombers view those children as threats. Among the suicide bombers, 75 percent are girls, according to a new report issued by UNICEF. Even though these rejected children many of whom are believed to have been captives are "victims, not perpetrators".

"Nigeria's security forces have contributed to the problem by using schools as military bases, putting children at further risk of attack from the Islamist armed group."
"At least 611 teachers have been deliberately killed."
Human Rights Watch

"Boko Haram has exploited common desires of youth ... to get ahead economically. Many youth described either accepting loans prior to joining or joining with the hope of receiving loans or capital for their mostly small, informal businesses."
Mercy Corps

Rebecca Issac, a Chibok schoolgirl who had escaped from the Boko Haram, reacts during an event that marks the second anniversary of the Boko Haram abduction of Chibok schoolgirls, in Abuja, Nigeria April 11, 2016. (Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters)

Girls and women escaping Boko Haram clutches describe their agonized experiences with sexual abuse and forced 'marriages'. The mass of the over 200 schoolgirls abducted from their residential school in Chibok, Nigeria two years ago have never been recovered. And the Nigerian military has been treating children abducted by Boko Harm as representing threats equal to the manner in which they regard the adults.

The military have placed boys on "wanted posters" across northeastern Nigeria, along with the visages of dozens of elite Boko Haram suspects.

Boko Haram Sex Slave Victims

Koran 33:50 

O Prophet (Muhammad)! Verily, We have made lawful to you your wives, to whom you have paid their Mahr (bridal money given by the husband to his wife at the time of marriage), and those (captives or slaves) whom your right hand possesses – whom Allah has given to you, and the daughters of your ‘Amm (paternal uncles) and the daughters of your ‘Ammah (paternal aunts) and the daughters of your Khal (maternal uncles) and the daughters of your Khalah (maternal aunts) who migrated (from Makkah) with you, and a believing woman if she offers herself to the Prophet, and the Prophet wishes to marry her; a privilege for you only, not for the (rest of) the believers. Indeed We know what We have enjoined upon them about their wives and those (captives or slaves) whom their right hands possess, – in order that there should be no difficulty on you. And Allah is Ever Oft Forgiving, Most Merciful.

Young Nigerian women, many of them in their mid-teens have been kept as sex slaves after their abduction by Boko Haram. The Islamist jihadist group that has claimed affiliation with Islamic State is, after all, only practising what the Koran informs them is permissible under Islam. That women can be taken as slaves to be used for sex, as long a they are not married, or pregnant. They may do as the Prophet Mohammad himself did, as part of the conquest of Islam.


Halima, 15, holds Hauwa, the baby of her friend Hamsatu, 25, who is sewing a prayer cap in their tent in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Both women were abducted, held captive and forced into marriage by Boko Haram. (Jane Hahn/For The Washington Post)

The result is that thousands of girls and women were and are being held, made subject by savage jihadists to rape and Islamist indoctrination. The Christian women were given the choice of conversion or death. To resist is to surrender their lives to an early death. Just as the Islamic State jihadists preyed on the Yazidis in Iraq by slaughtering the men, and taking women and children as slaves, so too do Boko Haram practise faithfully what the Koran informs they may do. "What their right hand possesses" refers to female slaves.

Some of those female slaves have managed to escape their Islamist captors. They have escaped sometimes with the aid of Nigerian military operations. The women and girls were often taken from villages destroyed by Boko Haram, where the male inhabitants were slaughtered and the homes they came from no longer exist. They return to crowded refugee camps where they may hope to be reunited with whomever of their family members may have survived.

But because they were captive by Boko Haram their reception is one of suspicion. The are under constant monitoring by armed men. They are considered still to be "Boko Haram wives".  It was hoped that among them would be some of the 276 school girls kidnapped by Boko Haram two years earlier and taken to the Sambisa Forest. In that vast area the sex slaves are kept and continually raped. The escaped girls and women living in the refugee camps are viewed with hostility and suspicion by others at the camp.

The guards maintain that "We can't trust any of them". Elderly women spit contempt at them as "wives" of Boko Haram. And the reason is that many of the young girls captured and violently abused by Boko Haram were trained to be suicide bombers. The mystery remains that these young girls agreed to become martyrs, but perhaps it's not all that much of a mystery. Martyrdom would bring them death, and death would be a release from the agony they suffer as sex slaves.

Some of the women have babies with them, the offspring of their rape. They wear the very same clothing they had on when they were kidnapped, a year, two years earlier. The camps that Boko Haram set up in the Sambisa Forest became their home. Most of the women and girls who were repeatedly raped didn't even know the names of those who claimed them as their "wives".


Hamsatu plays with daughter Hauwa at the Dalori displacement camp. She says she was forced to travel on foot and on the backs of motorcycles to the Sambisa Forest, where Boko Haram had set up camps for its sex slaves. (Jane Hahn/For The Washington Post)

When Nigerian soldiers arrived to rout the Boko Haram fighters from their hideouts in the forest, the huts the women were found in were burned to the ground, sometimes while women were still inside. Several women were killed during the operation because the soldiers were shooting at everyone who moved. The women found it difficult to consider themselves as having been rescued, they were searched for weapons. They were now considered to be suspects, not victims.

Traumatically Harrowing

"The girl looked tired, malnourished and psychologically tortured and could not give us more details about her stay in the forest and how her other mates were treated."
Idrissou Yaoubou, leader, self-defence group, Limani, Cameroon

This file photo taken from video released by Nigeria's Boko Haram terrorist network, Monday May 12, 2014, shows missing girls abducted from the northeastern town of Chibok.  (AP Photo)

A fifteen-year-old girl who informed authorities she was one of the Nigerian girls who had been abducted by Boko Haram marauders two years ago, had surrendered herself on Saturday in Cameroon rather than carry out a suicide bombing mission she had been tasked with. Her experience and her description served to confirm what experts had long suspected, that Boko Haram had instructed some of the girls they were to become suicide bombers.

These girls have been so demoralized, terror-stricken, their humanity degraded and their sex violated by their captors in their grim situation as slaves to barbarian masters that it would hardly be surprising that they would have little free will left to them. There can be little doubt that some of these girls would be only too willing to end their lives and escape the squalid misery and hopelessness that has been enforced upon them.

Although the authenticity of the girl's statements is undergoing a check, according to Midjiyawa Bakari, Far North region governor, a community leader in Chibok remarked that the girl's age would correspond with that of the youngest among the 765 girls abducted in 2014 from a government boarding school. With the 15-year-old there were two other young women with explosive belts one of whom was arrested, the other fleeing back into Nigeria.

The kind of torment that these young girls have been living with for the past two years can only be imagined. Abducted, herded into the large Nigerian forest to live among the Boko Haram terrorists where they were forced to become Muslims and where the leader of the jihadist group threatened to sell them off or to marry them to his fighters, there is little doubt that all of that did take place, the girls pawns in the life of Islamist jihadists.

Defenceless Against Unspeakable Terror

"She said she was scared because she knew she would kill people, but she was also frightened of going against the instructions of the men who brought her to the camp."
"Women, children, men and aged persons all died. I cannot say the exact number as some cannot be counted because the bodies were all mangled."
Modu Awami, self-defence fighter, Abuja, Nigeria

The girl's companions blew themselves up in the Dikwa Camp, in Borno State in north-eastern Nigeria, killing at least 58 STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images

"She confessed to our security operatives that she was worried if she went ahead and carried out the attack that she might kill her own father, who she knew was in the camp."
"[The girl tried to persuade her companions to abandon the mission] but she said she could not convince the two others to change their minds."
Algoni Lawan, spokesman, Ngala local government

Boko Haram enjoys its killing sprees, instilling trepidation and fear in the hearts of Nigerians whose government seems incapable of mustering sufficiently well armed troops to deploy for the protection of villagers from the ravages of the Islamist insurgency. The kidnapping of children and of women and of teens in particular seems a favourite ploy of theirs, since they excel also in threatening and forcing the young people to become suicide bombers.

Most latterly, three teenage girls were given precise instructions not to return to their camp until their work was finished. Perhaps two of the girls felt that they might miraculously survive the blasts that their suicide vests would occasion, killing only those surrounding them, and they might be spared. The third girl knew better, attempted to persuade the other two not to set off their vests but to try to escape instead as she apprehensively planned to do.

While they decided -- likely through fear of retribution from their captors should they not carry their instructions through to completion -- that they would proceed despite their fears, she proceeded to divest herself of the suicide vest and fled. They had been instructed to enter the Dikwa refugee camp in northeast Nigeria and to set off the explosives they wore. This is just what two of the child bombers did, destroying the lives of 58 people.

The runaway girl was found by self-defence forces and confessed to them what had occurred, proving her story by leading them directly to the vest she had discarded. She is now in custody after having given officials information about additional plans to bomb other areas, according to Satomi Ahmed, chairman of the Borno State Emergency Management Agency.

This young girl is only one among the thousands of kidnapped people whom the Boko Haram jihadis turn into living weapons. Some of the suicide bombs are rigged to be remotely detonated so that if this  young girl had been carrying one of those the choice to discard it and remove herself and others from immediate danger would not have been hers to make. In this instance, on this occasion, she was fortunate.

Far less fortunate those who carry through their instructions through force of fearful intimidation, losing their own lives in the process and taking with them those unfortunate enough to have been in the near vicinity. In Dikwa, body parts and corpses littered the scene in one of Africa's largest, most populous, wealthiest countries incapable of fending for itself and protecting its vulnerable populations from heinous Islamist slaughterers.

Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) mostly women and children stand waiting for food at Dikwa Camp, in Borno State in north-eastern Nigeria, on 2 February, 2016

Boko Haram Resplendent in Dealing Death

"They came in Golf saloon cars and began to shoot sporadically. Many people ran to the bush including myself."
"When we came back in the morning the entire community had been razed. At least 50 people were killed, and there are many people wounded."
Dalori Community leader Malam Masa

"Some women were kidnapped by the Boko Haram gunmen, but I don't know how many they were."

Mohammed Kanar, chief, National Emergency Management Agency

"We had just finished evening prayers when the gunmen came to our village and indiscriminately opened fire and set fire to homes."

"They detonated two bombs, which added to our fright and confusion. Everybody fled into the bush from where we saw our homes burning."

Kulo Sheriff, resident, Dalori, Nigeria 

"We slept in the bush with no blankets despite the chilling weather. We could hear soldiers battling with the Boko Haram attackers. It was terrifying."

Adamu Kyari, resident, Dalori 

People walk past burnt out houses following an attack by Boko haram in Dalori village 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Maiduguri, Nigeria , Sunday Jan. 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Jossy Ola)

Charred corpses and bodies of those who died from bullet wounds lay sprawled on the streets of Dalori village, the carnage from Boko Haram's attack on Saturday night. And nor was the village of Dalori the only place that had been under attack; two camps located nearby where 25,000 refugees were stationed were also under attack. 

And though the village itself lies a scant five kilometres from Maiduguri, the largest northeastern Nigerian city, where government troops are headquartered, for the very purpose of countering any possible incursions by the terrorist group, it took what must have seemed a lifetime before the military finally arrived in the village in response to the terrifying attack.

Only to discover that the attackers were in possession of more powerful arms than the soldiers, who then withdrew. Inadequate military gear was what plagued Nigerian troops under the old government of Goodluck Jonathan, a situation that was to have been remedied by the new government of Muhammadu Buhari. 

Finally, when superior-arms-provisioned soldiers arrived, the Boko Haram fighters were forced to retreat. And to celebrate yet another success on yet another soft target; suffering civilians. It is well worth asking who it is that funds these merciless barbarians? Their campaign is a costly one; they are equipped with vehicles and weapons that don't come cheap. So where is t heir funding coming from, why exactly is it that is so eager to see fundamentalist Sharia law rule in Nigeria?

Women and children look at burnt out houses following an attack by Boko Haram in Dalori village Sunday Jan. 31, 2016.  (AP Photo/Jossy Ola)

One survivor recounted his dreadful experience as he hid in a tree, witnessing the firebombing of village huts, hearing the wildly desperate screams of children trapped inside their homes, burning to death. Nigeria's Islamist terrorists scheming how best to inflate their already gruesome record of mass killings, abductions, rapes and atrocities, accounting for the fear-filled migration of tens of thousands of Nigerians, anxious to escape the kind of fate that befell these villagers.

Three female suicide bombers blew themselves up in the midst of throngs of people whom the suicide bombers planned to infiltrate for major damage, posing as villagers. The shooting of people, the torching of their huts went on for four hours, leaving 136 injured, among the 86 accounted for as killed outright. And then there are the missing, who likely will elevate the death count, as will some of those who have been injured seriously enough not to survive their devastating ordeal. 

For Boko Haram a satisfying job well done, for Nigeria's embattled citizens, yet another unspeakable tragedy. For a hugely populous African country with relative wealth thanks to its oil reserves, and the resulting revenues, it is beyond belief that its military hasn't come to grips with the systemic corruption within the military which has kept the funding meant to properly arm troops, to benefit the officer class.

Abubakar Shekau, leader of Boko Haram

Nigeria's Human Tragedy

"We just have to give praise to God that we are alive, those of us who have survived."
"They took me [captive by Boko Haram] so I can marry one of their commanders. When they realized I was pregnant, they said I was impregnated by an infidel, and we have killed him. Once you deliver, within a week we will marry you to our commander [they said]."
"Boko Haram came and told us they were moving out and that we should run away with them. But we said no."
"Then they started stoning us. I held my baby to my stomach and doubled over to protect her."
Lami Musa, 27, Yola, Nigeria

The women and children, survivors of months of captivity by Boko Haram, began speaking of their experiences, released from the war zone that has become the huge area of the Sambisa Forest in Nigeria. Lami Musa was one among the 275 girls, women and children rescued finally by the Nigerian military. Many among them bewildered and traumatized. As Lami Musa cradled her five-day-old baby girl she spoke of her relief to escape a forced marriage to one of the men who killed her husband.

The jihadists had taken her from her village after they had slaughtered the men there, including her husband. She was forced to abandon their three young children five months ago in Lassa Village. She had given birth to the baby the night previous to a mass rescue that had taken place last week in Sambisi Forest. Hers took place several days afterward. They are all now receiving medical care.

Some of the children are severely malnourished

The military claims that it has managed to free almost 700 captives in the past week from Boko Haram, though it remains yet to be clarified whether any among them represent the "Chibok girls", young students whose mass abduction a year ago from their school outraged the world, sparking a global campaign for their freedom. Lami Musa was among the first group of women and girls to be transported over three days to the safety of the Malkohi refugee camp on the outskirts of the capital of northeastern Adamawa state.

Another survivor of the stoning, Salamatu Bulama, 20, spoke of a number of girls and women who were killed; their numbers uncertain. A group of women were fearfully concealed under bushes unseen by soldiers riding in an armoured personnel carrier, which drove right over them. "I think those killed there were about ten", ventured Bulama. Others died from being hit by stray bullets.

And because there were insufficient vehicles to transport all of the captives, some women had to walk that distance to the refugee camp. They were given instructions to walk only in the tire tracks of the convoy to avoid traps that the Boko Haram jihadists had left, mining much of the forest. Some of the women likely strayed, setting off a landmine that killed three, Musa explained.

Salamatu Bulama cried when she spoke of her only son, two years of age, who had died two months earlier, of an illness brought on by malnutrition. "What will I tell my husband!" she wailed once she discovered from other survivors that her husband was alive and in the northern town of Kaduna.

Salamatu Bulama says she was among the among the women stoned by the militants

Free At Last

"This [Thursday's rescue] set (is) in addition to the previous individuals earlier rescued during the ongoing operation in the area."
"The assault on the forest is continuing from various fronts and efforts are concentrated on rescuing hostages . . . and destroying all terrorists camps and facilities in the forest."
Nigerian military statement

Now that Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan's term is concluding he has finally tasked the country's military with cleaning out the Boko Haram threat from his hard-pressed country. He now, finally, claims that the stronghold for the terrorist militia, the Sambisa Forest, is the last remaining refuge for the jihadists, pledging to "Hand over a Nigeria completely free of terrorist strongholds" to the incoming government.

Well, good for him, if rather tardy. Had he acted six years ago when the movement was in its fledgling stages, many lives would have been saved.

The terror that engulfed peoples' lives, knowing that their government was doing nothing to defend them from the horrendously violent attacks by Boko Haram, desperately attempting to forge their own teams of defenders from among their village men, simply marked them out for even more vicious treatment, as those villages known to have assembled protection teams saw all their men slaughtered in Boko Haram deadly raids.

The men killed, the women and children taken as slaves, and their villages burnt to the ground. This is the neglect that the most populous, oil-wealthy country in Africa surrendered to. Becoming dependent on its neighbouring states to mount offensives against Boko Harm when the jihadi groups spilled over the Nigerian border into their areas, threatening their civilians, and following the refugees camped out in fear and terror just inside their borders.

Dr. Oby Ezekwesili expresses support about the rescue of some women and girls from Sambisa forest while a Nigerian protest group continues their sit-in about the girls that are still missing from Chibok, in Abuja, Nigeria, April 29, 2015.
Now the Nigerian military, known for its ineffectiveness, for its corruption where military leaders siphoned off military operating funds, leaving their soldiers without weapons, has been prodded into action. The country's incoming president-elect has perhaps inspired the fear of cleaning up the corruption and removing its useless chief military staff in full knowledge of their commitment to their own bottom line rather than the security and protection of the country, as a former general (and president) himself.

For the time being, the military has finally moved itself to tackle clearing out the jihadist camps, freeing women and children in the process. The first photographs of what the military claims to be some of the hundreds of women and children that its troops have feed in recent days from the Sambisa Forest in the midst of heavy combat have been released. The girls and women are being screened to discern which villages they have come from.

A military spokesman mentioned that some of the women appear to have surrendered to the Stockholm syndrome of sympathy with their captors after having lived with them under forced marriages for months. The possibility that some women had joined Boko Haram of their own volition, or whether some are fighters' family members has also been entertained. Women, children and babies are held to be generally physically healthy in appearance.

A military medic attends to a freed hostage in Sambisa forest, northeastern Nigeria, after rescue operations earlier this week. Photograph: Rex Shutterstock

A young military medic wearing blue rubber gloves and a surgical mask was photographed checking some of the children. Some of the women and girls now freed are pregnant. Last Wednesday, the Nigerian military reported its first rescue of about 300 women and children, where some of the women were using rifles to fire at the soldiers -- before they were disarmed and taken into custody -- as they were taught to do by Boko Haram.

An undated handout picture released by the Nigerian army shows a soldier standing with a group of women and children rescued in an operation against the militant Islamist group Boko Haram.  (Photo: Nigerian army via European Pressphoto Agency)

Nigeria, High On Hope

"Boko Haram will soon know the strength of our will and commitment to rid this nation of terror."
"We shall spare no effort until we defeat terrorism."
"Corruption attacks and seeks to destroy our national institutions and character ... distorts the economy and creates a class of unjustly enriched people."
"Such an illegal yet powerful force soon comes to undermine democracy because it has amassed so much money that they believe they can buy government."
Muhammadu Buhari, Nigerian President-elect

Supporters of All Progressives Congress (APC) celebrate on March 31, 2015 in Lagos (AFP Photo/Pius Utomi Ekpei)

"We knew that we had the numbers last night, but dealing with the type of government we have, we have never really felt we are out of the woods. Clearly we have won it. We are going to the party headquarters now and the presidential candidate will declare victory."
Garba Shehu, spokesman, All Progressives Congress

"It is very significant in our democratic growth, in grounding democracy and consolidating it. We can't have a one-party democracy. We're setting a very great example for the rest of the smaller states in Africa."
Ebere Onwudiwe, political scientist, Ken Nnamani Centre for Leadership and Development, Nigeria

As a former major general in the Nigerian military, it must surely have grated furiously on Muhammadu Buhari that the once-respected military that he was part of was incapable of defending his country, the largest, most populous and natural-resources enriched, as a result of endemic malfeasance in the upper ranks of the military, fed by overall government corruption.

Main opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate Mohammadu Buhari holds up his ballot paper prior to voting in Daura, in northern Nigeria's Katsina State, on March 28, 2015 (AFP Photo/Pius Utomi Ekpei)

That Nigeria was becoming unstable, its villages and towns overrun by a wildly run-amok Islamist terrorist group whose predations had slaughtered innocent Nigerians, abducted hundreds of schoolgirls and created over a million desperate refugees, must have appalled him. And all the more that its lesser-endowed neighbours, Chad, Cameroon and Niger were forced to mount their own defences against the scourge emanating from Nigeria.

A tired Nigerian woman sits down to rest as others queue, while they face long delays to cast their vote in the afternoon at a polling station in Daura, the home town of opposition candidate Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, in northern Nigeria Saturday, March 28, 2015. Nigerians went to the polls Saturday in presidential elections which analysts say will be the most tightly contested in the history of Africa's richest nation and its largest democracy. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

Goodluck Jonathan, too long governing the country as an ineffectual and completely compromised president, had the good grace not to demur when it became evident that he and his ruling party had been rejected soundly by a majority count, despite their having indulged in threats and illegal practices at the ballot box. Violence which had visited the election where Mr. Buhari had been defeated by Mr. Jonathan in 2011, was not repeated this time around.

In his previous incarnation as Nigeria's dictator, Muhammadu Buhari governed in a manner reflective of his military past. Three decades earlier he recouped looted state assets to return them to government treasury and conducted a "war against indiscipline" which placed the military in the streets to enforce traffic laws, imposing humiliations on civil servants who were malingerers, and executed drug dealers. Journalists critical of government were jailed and indefinite detention was decreed by law.

Mr. Buhari, fresh from his victory at the polls, has pledged himself to extirpating corruption as well as putting down the Islamist scourge he describes as having "challenged Nigeria to its limits". In the north of the country thousands of Nigerians were celebrating in the streets with shouts of "No Boko Haram! No Boko Haram!", while dancing and waving brooms symbolic of their new president's pledge to sweep out corruption.

Destroying Lives in Nigeria

"I think they are going to recruit them. That is we know they do with young boys. They are raping the women and they are taking the young boys to their camps and teaching them everything about what they are doing."
"If you are going for three kilometres to buy your fish, you cannot do that. If your fields are two or three kilometres away, you cannot go. They are just killing any people who they find."
"I had to lie down and crawl because the bullets were flying. Bodies were lying everywhere. I saw hundreds of bodies."
"Boko Haram are just terrorists. They are not for Islam -- they are not for anything. They are just for killing people."
Nasiru Saidu, 43, trader, Doron Baga, Nigeria

The Nigerian shore of the southern fringe of the Sahara has been dominated by Boko Haram as they pillage and burn entire towns, killing people, taking hostages as slave labour, and young boys to train as future militant-terrorists. Nigeria's army, representing the largest country in Africa with a huge oil income, has been outgunned and outfought, losing control of a huge territory where hundreds of thousands of people have been abandoned, to be preyed upon by Boko Haram.

Desperate refugees have fled to neighbouring countries of Niger, Cameroon and Chad. And even there they cannot find surcease from the predations of Boko Haram, when the Islamists invaded Chad, attacking a village 16 kilometers from the Nigerian border. People from Doron Baga, a fishing town in Nigeria, fled the destruction of their town early in January.

The terrorists faced no opposition as they rounded up all the men in Doron Baga. That village and another were captured and put to the torch. The leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, had a vendetta against the men of Baga and Doron Baga because they attempted to form vigilante militias to meet the threats from Boko Haram. All the men were shot dead. They took the women and children.

If a town or village captured by Boko Haram puts up no resistance they are spared immediate slaughter. Residents are assembled to learn through a general announcement that they have become citizens of the new "Islamic Caliphate" being built across Africa. Young men and boys are taken off for training and indoctrination while girls are carried off as sex slaves for fighters, and mature women become domestic servants.

Life under Boko Haram is gruellingly difficult; people's traditional method of livelihoods are taken from them. North-eastern Nigeria has depended on the use of ancient trade routes through Niger, Chad and the Sahara. Now those arteries have been blocked by war. Goods can no longer be carried over the lake to Chad in a day. Travel now must be from Nigeria to Chad through a ,60 kilometre route through Niger, a month's journey.

Africa has been fairly dilatory in helping itself overcome the predations of this Islamist fanatical group of terrorists. The continent serves itself ill through most of its varied countries with civil wars, corrupt governments, and a general aura of disinterest in the need to protect its vulnerable people from the ravages of psychopathic criminals doing the work of Islam.