Women Rescued From Sambisa Forest Recount Ordeals

Series of heartbreaking stories have continued to emerge following the rescue of hundreds of women and girls from the Sambisa Forest.

During a visit to Malkoi, one of the camps for displaced persons in Yola, Adamawa State, one of the rescued women, Asabe Aliyu, a 23-year-old pregnant mother of four children from Delsak, a village near Chibok town, said Boko Haram men took turns to sleep with her.

The traumatized woman who intermittently vomited blood, an indication that she sustained internal injuries, added that she was forced into marrying someone after a series of sexual assaults unleashed on her by different men on a daily basis.

“I was abducted six months ago in Delsak when our village was overrun by Boko Haram. First I had sojourned from my village to a forest close to Cameroun, they turned me into a sex machine. They took turns to sleep with me. Now, I am pregnant and I cannot identify the father,” she said in tears.

If she thought that the pregnancy would elicit compassion from the sect, Asabe was wrong. “With my condition as a pregnant woman, I did the cooking of their food,” she lamented.

Another woman, Lami Musa, clutched a three-day-old baby girl. She looked tired and haggard. Her legs were swollen and a support had to be given to her before she could work.

Fighting back tears tears, she said: “They adducted the whole of my family and killed my husband at Kilkasa forest when I was four months pregnant. They took us to Sambisa forest, we were sleeping in an open field. For days, we went without water or food.”

Lami continued: “Three days ago, I gave birth to this baby girl. As I am talking to you, I cannot ascertain the status of her health. I have not had a bath since I was delivered of the baby. The baby is yet to be bathed too.”

Maryamu Adamu, from Minchika,  said she saw hell in Sambisa. She could not tell if her two children and husband were still alive because she had not set her eyes on them since she was captured and taken to the Sambisa forest nine months ago. She is, however, full of thanks to God that the ordeal appears to have now ended.

“I know I was dead, my existing now is just a mere shadow of life as nothing moves me. But now that I am here, I confirm that I am a living being.I thank God that I am alive. I thank God,” she said.

Source: Daily Times