INTERVIEW-Mother of Nigerian schoolgirl rescued from Boko Haram fears for her future
Mon Aug 1, 2016 1:22pm GMT
"She did not want to see him," Binta said, adding that the teacher had stopped visiting after she complained about him. Garba Shehu, Buhari's spokesman, said that Amina's confinement in the house had nothing to do with religion. "NO LONGER AFRAID" Boko Haram kidnapped 219 girls from their school in Chibok, northeast Nigeria, in April 2014, as part of their seven-year-old insurgency to set up an Islamic state in the north that has killed some 15,000 people and displaced more than 2 million. Some girls escaped in the melee but parents of those still missing accused former President Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria's then leader, of not doing enough to find their daughters, whose disappearance sparked a global campaign #bringbackourgirls. Binta said she was shocked to hear about the hardships faced by her daughter as a captive of the Islamist group. Amina and the other girls, starving and with nothing to cook with, resorted to eating an entire bag of beans and maize raw. "I cannot imagine how a human being can eat raw maize and beans like a goat," Binta said
"Other parents have been coming to visit me since I returned," Binta said. "But I have not told them anything, even though I know some of those whose daughters have died."
Despite her fears over Amina's religion and education, and uncertainty over when she will be allowed to return home, Binta said she still had reason to be positive about her daughter.
"She used to be very afraid," Binta said, explaining how Amina would talk to herself during the night prior to her kidnap.
"But now she sleeps soundly. She is no longer afraid." (Reporting by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, Writing by Kieran Guilbert, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)
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