Maiduguri Women To JTF: Release Our Husbands, Children Now By: Kareem Haruna on November 16, 2013 - 4:58am Wives, mothers and children of persons allegedly arrested by the military operatives and detained for months took to the streets of Maiduguri pleading with the authorities to release their husbands, children and parents in detention or tell them the truth if they are no longer alive. KAREEM HARUNA, Maiduguri reports. It was an emotional scenario when the women, in their hundreds, stormed the premises of the Borno Radio Television (BRTV) asking to be heard over their plights. LEADERSHIP Weekend gathered from most of the troubled groups that their husbands, sons and fathers had been taken away by military operatives and kept in detention in the barracks for different periods ranging from eight months to over one year. Yahadiza Bulama Musa, a mother and Medical Records staff of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, who was the spokesperson for the group, said most of their husbands and children arrested by the soldiers months back were innocent. She wondered why they were still being kept in custody without anyone telling them the truth about their state of being. In an emotionally drenched voice and in tears, Yahadiza said two of her sons, Mustapha Tijjani Bukar and Allamin Sule Tijani, both graduates, were arrested while they were driving out of their street at Ngomari junction on June 6, 2013, and since then she had not set her eyes on them. Our children are not Boko Haram. They were arrested innocently and wrongly by the JTF who labelled them Boko Haram. I am a mother and should know my children better. If they are Boko Haram, I will not be here wasting my time. But I know my children; they are educated just like their parents. I have written several letters to the then JTF and even the present 7 Division in September and October but they never listened to me or responded to me. The last time I was there the commander chased me away that they didn’t want to see anyone again. I became afraid and could not go back there again. If they are dead let them tell me so that I can mourn them in peace, she said. A 14-year-old boy, Bashir Zarami, who broke down in tears while recounting his ordeal when his father was arrested in his presence, said he could no longer go to school or feed himself properly. My father is a provision seller there at Bayan Quarters area, he recalled. I was with him the day soldiers came to our shop eight months ago (February) and began to beat us, asking us to lie down with our faces to the ground. After treading on us, they dragged my father out and took him away. Since then I was left alone. I don’t know my mother; my father brought me up alone. Now I have no one, I cannot go to school, and no one to feed me except I beg. Please Governor Kashim should assist me to free my father; they said he is in Giwa barracks, and I cannot go there. Another woman, Halima Isa, said her son, Yahaya, 30 years old, was a furniture maker at Jiddari Polo area of Maiduguri. Security personnel arrested him one morning while trying to pray at home. He was in the bedroom with his wife when soldiers came in to pick him calling him Boko Haram. He was innocent. That boy feeds and takes care of me and his pregnant wife. I have nobody except him. He pays for my medical bills; treats my hypertension and ulcer ailment. We are not Boko Haram; we are Fulanis from Adamawa, and God knows we don’t know any Boko Haram. Please government should help us to see our children again. Aisha Muhammed Luwaye said her husband was arrested on the day a police officers wife was killed by Boko Haram behind the Railway Quarters. We were at home on that day when soldiers came to carry out mass arrest. And since then he has not returned. It is over one year now, and I am left alone with 4 children. I was pregnant then, but when I later put to bed, the child died because I had no means of taking care of him. I swear by the holy Quran that he is innocent. He cant even hurt a fly.” Several other women had their tales of sorrow and denial insisting that their husbands, brothers and sons were not Boko Haram. LEADERSHIP Weekend gathered that most of the women came from Bayan Quarters, a location that is very close to where the deceased Boko Haram leader, Muhammed Yusuf, had his main mosque, now demolished by the military. In February this year, the Directorate of Civil Military Relations from the Defence headquarters Abuja, led by Air Commodore Ademola Onitiju visited Maiduguri in the wake of an earlier protest that the army had been keeping suspects in detention without trial. Onitiju, who interacted with the locals, promised that a special investigation team made up of legal luminaries would soon be deployed by the Defence Headquarters to screen suspects in detention with a view to freeing innocent and charging those who had case to answer to civil courts for trial.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 19:32:34 +0000
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