What Endures in Borno Are the People

This story appears in our print issue, ‘100 Years of Ladi Kwali: Stories from Another Nigeria’. Buy here.

As devastating as Mallam Bukar’s experience was, he told me that two years later, Boko Haram affected him in ways he could not have imagined. His wife and three children, who were separated from him during the February 2014 attack, were later reunited with him. When the Bama attack happened, they had fled with many other residents to Cameroon, through one of the porous borders that Boko Haram also exploited to move fighters and supplies. He told me that a government humanitarian agency later transferred them from refugee camps in Cameroon to an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in Dikwa, one of the largest IDP camps at the time. He travelled to Dikwa and was reunited with his family after more than two years of separation, but their reunion was cut short when two Boko Haram suicide bombers attacked the camp and killed his wife and children, alongside over 50 other civilians. He told me it was impossible to say exactly how many victims there were. ‘The bombs set the place on fire. Many died. We found body parts everywhere after the attack, but it was at least over 50.’

Mallam Bukar’s current wife, Fatum, whom he married in 2019, was knitting a cap and listening to our conversation. She added that female suicide bombers carried out a significant proportion of attacks on IDP camps because they attracted less suspicion and could access camps more easily than male militants. As she joined the conversation, Mallam Bukar then told me that his wife was also a survivor of a Boko Haram attack in her hometown of Guzamala, in northern Borno State, about 270 kilometres from Maiduguri.

Fatum recounted that one day in 2014, Boko Haram insurgents came to her parents’ home and asked to marry her. Although they offered to pay the dowry, the marriage was not consensual. They threatened her parents that if they said no, they would kill her father and forcibly abduct her. Her Boko Haram ‘husband’ took her to Sambisa forest, where she was sexually abused for over two years, until he was killed during a raid by state forces and she was rescued alongside many other Boko Haram ‘wives’. She met Mallam Bukar in an IDP camp, and like many widowed and displaced people, they married, su rufawa juna asiri (‘to protect each other’s dignity’), as they say it. They continue to rebuild their lives together. She knits caps, and he sells them, one of the thriving small businesses in Borno.