“My daughter says she wants to be a teacher, her little sibling says she wants to be a doctor. But now, I don’t know what will happen to all that dream. Before she left home for school, she said to me, “mama, I am going to school, I will be writing my final paper, please pray for me to be successful and become something in life. That was the last conversation we had.”
Tomorrow, June 8, Dorcas would have been 16. There were plans to make it a memorable one especially as it would have been her first birthday after secondary school life. But sadly, the latest development means there would be no celebration in the home of the Yakubus – at least for now. Apart from taking away their first and most promising child, the terrorists also took the family’s peace and joy along.
“It’s been a miserable period for the family. Her younger siblings always ask me where their sister is. The small one who is four years old says to the other that the soldiers took Dorcas away, that they took her to Maiduguri. The elder one would say no, that it is Boko Haram that took her away and not the soldiers.
“For the first two weeks, the little ones were not even eating. If we prayed and wanted to eat, I just burst into tears and so the others would start crying too. That’s how we would all abandon the food.
“Since this thing happened, my husband has never stayed in the house for even 30 minutes during the day time because if he sees me crying, he will also break down in tears. So, most times, he comes in to take his bath and goes out again. He has been thinking every day,” she said.
Recalling events leading to her daughter’s unexpected disappearance on that fateful day, the visibly troubled Yakubu told Saturday PUNCH that the girls were tricked by the insurgents and that there was a strange mood in Chibok shortly before the incident.
“We were confused at first because the girls used to shout whenever there was danger. But on that day, there was total silence. We never knew those people had arrested them, telling them they came to take them to a safe place because Chibok was not good for them. The girls never knew they were Boko Haram. There was no shouting; there was no noise, so we all thought it was a joke.
“By the time I got to the school, I only saw one girl in the hostel. There was nobody else. I thought children are spared during attacks, but at Chibok, they packed both elderly and little girls away.
“On the day that thing happened, there was nobody to help. The soldiers tried, but they were not many. There were only 15 of them guarding Chibok before that incident happened. We are too many for 15 soldiers to protect,” the mother of five said.
Though, the number of security personnel keeping watch over Chibok has since increased following Boko Haram’s latest onslaught on the community, for many of its residents, fear is still the order of the day. It will take a long time before the town dusts off the shock.
“Life has been miserable in Chibok since that period because we have been living in fear. Anytime children are playing and they hit drum or some other objects that produces a loud sound, we all run in different directions. We would be afraid, thinking they had come back again.
“I am afraid for the safety of my other children still in Chibok with their father but we have no choice. Where will we go to? My husband is not working for now, so we can’t talk about going to another place or state to start a new life. We have no choice at this time,” Yakubu lamented.
Yana Galang, 48, is another grieving mother. Her daughter, Rufkatu, the fifth of eight children, is among the around 200 girls still in Boko Haram’s captivity. She was 17 yesterday June 6 – one of several Chibok girls who have either marked or would be celebrating their birthdays in captivity. The situation continues to keep the family in distress.
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