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HomeUncategorizedRescued Nigerian women reveal exclusive details about life under Boko Haram

Rescued Nigerian women reveal exclusive details about life under Boko Haram

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Boko Haram is fracturing as shortages of weapons and fuel foment tensions between its foot soldiers and leaders, women rescued from the Islamist jihadi fighters by Nigerian troops told.

The group abducted an estimated 2,000 women and girls last year as it sought to carve out an Islamic state in the northeast of Africa’s biggest economy. The army has freed nearly 700 in the past week as it advances on Boko Haram’s last stronghold in the vast Sambisa forest.

The militants began complaining to their captives about lacking guns and ammunition last month, two of the women said, and many were reduced to carrying sticks while some of their vehicles were either broken down or lacked gasoline.

“They were always complaining that their leader, I can’t recall his name now, but that their leader has deceived them in fighting and killing in the name of religion. And now the unfaithful were killing them. They don’t give them guns and nothing good was happening to them. As such they were not happy with their leaders. We hear them complain everyday,” said rescued woman Hanatu Musa.

A 45-year old mother of two, Aisha Abbas, who was taken from Dikwa in April, said the fighters all had guns at first but recently, only some carried them.

“Some of them have guns, but some have no guns, many of them. But the biggest ones have,” she said.

Even the wife of their captors’ leader, Adam Bitri, openly criticized him and subsequently fled, two of the women said, with one describing Bitri as short and fat with a beard.

Of 275 freed captives brought to a government-run camp for internally displaced people in the Malkohi hamlet on the outskirts of Adamawa state capital, Yola, only 61 were over 18, and many small children hobbled around visibly malnourished.

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