Boko Haram terrorists are invading an IDP camp at the heart of Borno state in northeastern Nigeria and abducting displaced people, who usually have to sell most of their assets or borrow money to raise huge ransoms. Some of the victims have now relocated someplace else where they feel safer.
It was midnight. Yasin Dogo, 25, was fast asleep when someone tapped his neck. He opened his eyes, expecting to see his wife or one of his children. Instead, he was staring down the barrel of a gun. Boko Haram terrorists had snuck into the Muna Garage camp for internally displaced persons, looking for people to kidnap. One must have climbed in through the window and opened the door for the others. There were five of them. One was dressed in military uniform. Three had guns.
Yasin was defiant still. He asked what the intruders wanted.
“They responded that nothing had happened. I said that something must have definitely happened. If not, they would not have pointed a gun at me in the middle of the night inside my room.”
The terrorists told him not to panic, but by this time, one of his wives had woken up, too. She nearly screamed, but they threatened to shoot Yasin if she caused a commotion. Two armed men held both his hands and dragged him into the cold darkness. A third terrorist kept pointing a gun at his back. When they got close to the outskirts of the city, they offered Yasin two unpleasant choices: You either come with us, or we kill you.
Yasin complied. They spent the rest of the night walking. He recalled passing through a forest in Kauri, known as Gazuwa. Before dawn, they had reached Ngoom Forest, where they finally stopped to observe the subh (morning) prayer. Then, they resumed the journey for a few hours. By 8 a.m., they rested somewhere for the rest of the day and nourished themselves with bottles of waterlogged garri. At sunset, they continued again, walking throughout the night until they reached the terrorists’ camp the following morning.
“I spent five days in captivity.”
Yasin was displaced eight years ago from Ngamdua, a community in the Mafa area of Borno, northeastern Nigeria. Since then, he has found shelter at the Muna Garage camp in Jere — a local government area that hugs the capital city of Maiduguri and is often seen as a part of it. His kidnapping was the first in a series. The abductions have become so frequent, happening almost weekly or biweekly. Ahmadu Aga, a community leader within the camp, disclosed that there were five successful abductions in the two months between the end of June and the end of August that affected IDPs from the Dikwa local government area. Eight people were kidnapped during these incidents. Two other attempts failed because women sighted the terrorists on time and raised an alarm.
Usually, when someone is abducted, other IDPs would rally around to raise their ransoms, which could be up to ₦1.5 million. Such crowdfunding efforts became so frequent that the displaced people had to establish committees to coordinate them.
In the past, abductions like these were only common in the remote farmlands and forest areas on the outskirts of town. Once they returned to their shelters in the evening, the IDPs in the area generally felt safe from the bloodthirsty blades of the violent extremist groups. But this is no longer the case. Various victims who spoke to HumAngle mentioned that there was no presence of security personnel on the routes the terrorists took from the town to their strongholds. Meanwhile, the camp is only a 30-minute drive from the state government house and the police headquarters in Maiduguri.
In Yasin’s case, the terrorists blurted out their demands when they reached their hideout. Ultimately, they would only let him go if somebody paid ₦4 million for his freedom. Otherwise, they would kill him. When Yasin replied that he could not afford such an amount, they said he should ask his father. They claimed to have tracked and targeted him because of some information they had obtained.
Yasin still had his phone with him, so he called his father, who asked the terrorists the same question.
“Where do you expect me to get the money from?”
“That is your problem,” the captors responded. “Do not call this line again until you have raised the ransom.”
The terrorists took their frustration out on Yasin, beating and threatening him to reveal how much his father had and what his assets were worth.
Two days later, the phone rang. Yasin’s father had not raised the ₦4 million. He simply could not. He pleaded with the terrorists to spare his son’s life and accept however much he was able to scrape together. The group initially insisted on that amount before agreeing to make it ₦3 million.
“My father still told them he could not afford ₦3 million. He said if he had such kind of money, he would not have been in an IDP camp,” Yasin recalled.
Eventually, his father managed to raise ₦1.7 million, which was good enough for the terrorists. He had emptied his savings, which had money he planned to reinvest into his farm. He got ₦100,000 from his brother and ₦200,000 from other families and friends. Then, he borrowed an additional ₦400,000, promising to pay back after the harvest season. Yasin’s two older brothers delivered the ransom.
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