Crime
How terrorists slaughtered my parents – IDP
By OKOSUN DEENIS
For anybody that was fortunate to have escaped the horror of Boko Haram’s attack, the simplest thing you hear from them is “Humm! Only God spared my life.”
Many Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) will tell you this each time they tell their stories.
Some have been so mentally tortured, psychologically bruised and demented to the extent that the mention of Boko Haram reminds them of sad old days as if another attack is about to happen.
For others, the agony of losing family members, especially parents and sibling is so heart-aching that the sad memory of recalling such things leaves them with tears rolling down their cheeks.
Speaking with Mrs RejoiceSunday, an IDP who was displaced from Gwoza, Borno state, brought sad moments of the evil wreaked on Nigerians by Boko Haram insurgents especially those living in the northeast.
The brutalization for those that escaped is unimaginable. The torture they were subjected to, unquantifiable. The pains are heart-aching and difficult to heal. The life they are living now is difficult to conjecture – to some no future, no hope.
Rejoice is a 22-year-old married woman, who is presently staying with her husband at Oniru in Victoria Island. Mildly, she explained that she got married after her parents and little brother were killed and was forced out of school as a student of the Government College, Goshe in Gwoza. According to her, marriage was the least thing to her as she was determined to pursue her education. Unfortunately, all her dreams were buried when Boko Haram struck their family house and brought everything to ruins within seconds on the night of 2013 – even though she couldn’t recollect the exact date and day.
She told National Daily at the Airforce Base Ikeja where IDPs were given medical attention and needs during the African Partnership Flight (APF) that was hosted by the Nigerian Airforce in partnership with the United States Airforce.
Rejoice explained, “Boko Haram attacked our house about 4am in the morning of that fateful day. It is a day I will never forget in my life. My father and mother with my little brother strapped to her back were slaughtered.
“I never thought I will be alive to tell the story of what happened that night. It was only God that spared my life. I could have been slaughtered the same way they slaughter my parents. The image of how my parents were killed, the attack on our home and the killing of my younger one who was strapped to my mother’s back are difficult to forget.
“Before they killed them and burnt our house, my father asked us to park the other children to my aunty’s house before they caught up with them. It was God that saved me and my other siblings, otherwise, I wouldn’t have been here to talk about what I knew and the painful experience we went through in the hand of devilish terrorists.
“Also, Boko Haram abducted my mother-in-law and my father’s mother too and taken them away and they have not been seen since then.
Asked how she got to Lagos, Rejoice further stated that she was brought to Lagos by her husband. “My husband brought me to Lagos after Boko Haram burnt our house in Gwoza and killed my father and mother in 2013,” she reiterated.
Rejoice was a Senior Secondary School 1 at the Government College in Goshe before the attack. “I had to stop school because of the displacement. My husband is at Oniru in Victoria Island.”
Expressing her bitterness over her truncated educational pursuit she cherished so much, she added that education was one of the most important things that Boko Haram robbed her from getting.
“I had to marry after stopping school and couldn’t fed for myself. I am presently at Oniru’s palace where my husband drives Keke Marwa,” she noted.
Also speaking to National Daily, a 42-year-old Mohammed Audu, from Gwoza said they were sacked from their home by Boko Haram and lost the younger brother and everything they could have boasted to have acquired in life. “We are left with nothing; no house and food.”
Audu married with two wives and have eight children, resides at Ogijo in Ikorodu, unable to pay rent. He added that “the situation is bad and affecting his family.
“My family are with me at Ikorodu and my parents are in Gwoza. My younger brother was killed by Boko Haram and was about 35 years old. They attacked my house in Gwoza and burnt everything in 2014.
He further explained that even though there were massive destruction during several attacks on their town, added that peace was returning to the town as security agencies are everywhere.
The IDP noted that “people are still afraid to return because when you look back into how we were attacked and so many people killed, it is difficult for anybody to say he wants to return to Gwoza.
“It’s only God that saved me and my father to have been able to escape. I am presently living in Ogijo in a shanty house,” he concluded.
Abdullazziz Aliyu also explained how Boko Haram launched an attack at Gwoza and killed everybody in sight.
“At times, I am awoken suddenly at night and the memory of the horrible killings makes me lose sleep. Whoever that started Boko Haram didn’t help Nigeria as a country.
The 32 years old man added that, “My father was killed by Boko Haram in 2014 but my mother and grandfather managed to escape. Two of my brother’s children were killed and my house was also burnt.
“We have suffered a lot from Boko Haram. My childhood friends were all killed. The worst of it all were those ones they arrested in my presence. As I speak, we have not been able to see any of them. We believe they have been killed too.
“My father that Boko Haram killed and my close friends that also lost their lives during the attacks cannot be forgotten in a hurry not to talk of my house that I suffered to build that was also burnt.
“They killed my father in the night but I was able to escape with my mother. In fact, it is difficult to say what really happened. I just saw myself free from their enclave because they were out to kill everybody,” he said.
Aliyu is married and have three children. He presently lives at Obalende under bridge until about three weeks ago when Lagos State Task Force demolished every shanty erected under the bridge, living him homeless, hopeless and disorganised again.
Aliyu, looking distrust and confused with his pitiable state added that “Unfortunately, we have been quitted from under the bridge and I now sleep on the main road at night.”
To make ends meet, he hustles selling medicine with which he feeds and sends little money to his family recovery from the ruins left one the once peaceful town called Gwoza in Borno State.