She says her Boko Haram 'boys' are also aware of this fact. Click HERE to read the full interview. We would love to hear what you think about the content on Pulse. Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected!
Authors: Goodness Adaoyichie. September 23, PM. Human rights activist, Aisha Wakil, popularly called Mama Boko Haram had claimed that the terrorists contacted her to confirm the Dapchi girls are in their possession. Nicknamed Mama Boko Haram by locals, Barrister Aisha Wakil made headlines after the terrorists released a video showing the abducted Chibok schoolgirls. Recommended articles. She took on local beauty customs, keeping her hands and fingers covered in lalle, a type of henna plant dye.
She followed the local expectations of a Muslim wife, too, covering her head in a hijab whenever she stepped out of her home. When her husband started telling her that he did not like the way men were admiring her face, she began wearing the niqab to conceal it. Shortly after Wakil moved to her house in Maiduguri, she decided to start leaving her front door open.
She was still fairly new to the city and wanted to be welcoming. Soon, poor Kanuri boys, about six or seven years old, began streaming in.
Wakil let them play in her compound. Eventually, she would let them garden with her and pick fruit from her trees. The circumcision of a Muslim boy is a sacred rite in northern Nigeria. In Maiduguri, it usually takes place when boys are about seven.
But Wakil was still getting used to the customs of north-eastern Nigeria. Some people there saw her as an outsider, a southerner. At times she felt like one, too. And as she continued to adjust to a culture that was so different from the one she grew up in, it was her sons who kept her company. Back in those days, Maiduguri still felt like the city of peace. A round the turn of the century, life in Maiduguri started to change. After , when military rule ended and civilian rule was restored to Nigeria, sectarian tensions increased.
Between and , to ensure that the new secular, democratic government in Abuja would not encroach on Islamic principles, 12 northern states adopted full sharia law. Religious tensions were particularly raw in the wide swathe of fertile land south of Borno state, known in Nigeria as the Middle Belt. In , in one Middle Belt city, Jos, about 1, people were killed in violence between Christians and Muslims. In Maiduguri, that same year, a total lunar eclipse sparked a riot , after local Muslim men took the eclipse as a sign that the city was overrun with immorality.
News agencies reported that the men set ablaze at least 40 hotels, brothels and bars. Yusuf subscribed to a radical, militant strand of the conservative Sunni branch of Islam known as Salafism.
In his sermons, he attacked boko meaning secular education and deemed it haram sinful. By , Yusuf had a devoted group of followers, known as Yusufiyya, and people started referring to his ideology as Boko Haram. He railed against government corruption, as well as the growing influence of western Judeo-Christian culture in the north. A few hundred of his followers moved there, settling around the train tracks. He told his followers that Nigeria was an infidel state, and it was time to prepare for jihad against the government.
Meanwhile, violence between Christians and Muslims across Nigeria continued to escalate. Many protests turned violent, which began a vicious cycle of attacks and counterattacks between Christians and Muslims, leaving dozens dead. Wakil knew Yusuf, having befriended his wife and father-in-law around the time he began amassing a following. She saw him as another son. Maiduguri residents who knew Yusuf told me that he respected Wakil.
She remembers one of the boys who went away for three months. When he returned to town, he was no longer the jovial teenager that he used to be.
He came back with a quiet, brooding disposition. When she asked where he had been, he told her that he had gone somewhere to learn how to kill people. She confronted Yusuf about it. Yusuf and his followers were becoming increasingly combative, repeatedly fighting with security agents. The final trigger was a now-infamous incident that took place in June The Yusufiyya argued with the patrol force, and soon shots rang out. The government never investigated what happened.
Yusuf was livid, and responded with a series of diatribes directly threatening the Nigerian government and ordering Muslims to acquire weapons. Those messages went beyond Maiduguri, recorded on DVDs and tapes that circulated across the region.
Wakil realised that her sons and Yusuf were headed for trouble. She spoke to his father-in-law about her concerns, and he, too, was worried. On 21 July , police raided the home of a sect member and seized bomb-making materials. The Yusufiyya burned down a police station on 26 July in Bauchi state, west of Borno, where Yusuf had a farm. Police raided the farm, killing dozens of militants. Later that day, jihadists also attacked a police station in Maiduguri and for the next four days, they terrorised the city, killing police and soldiers, and slitting the throats of civilians caught in the middle.
Soldiers captured Yusuf and handed him over to the police, who executed him. But it only made things worse. From then on, Boko Haram began targeting schools and kidnapping women. These were men she had taken care of as they grew up. Now, she decided to pray for them to repent. And she kept looking after them: she gave them clothes, money and phones, believing they could be reformed with love. She took care of the wives and children they left behind in the cities.
But she feared how far her sons would go. Maiduguri became an urban war zone. At night, the sound of gunfire filled the air. During the day, residents were afraid to gather for weddings and parties.
Speaking out against the militants could get you killed, so residents kept usually silent. But Wakil was an exception. Her associations with Boko Haram were no secret. Producers at a local TV news station invited her to the studio to speak about the rising insecurity. During that broadcast, Wakil said the fighters should stop, that she was pleading to them as a mother to her sons. She was the only woman who would publicly declare that she spoke regularly to the militants.
With its modern, expansive campus, more than 20, students and international staff, it is the pride of the city. And as a secular, coeducational institution, it was also an obvious target for Boko Haram.
In , the group carried out a series of high-profile attacks. Back in Maiduguri, not even the beloved Shehu of Borno — who had publicly denounced Boko Haram as un-Islamic — was safe. He barely escaped a suicide bombing in the central mosque where people were worshiping.
The judge substituted the charges and ordered them to be read to the defendants. HumAngle could not get sources to speak on the plight of Mama Boko Haram because the case was in court. Under Nigerian law, it constitutes contempt of court to comment on a case in a way that may be prejudicial to it. However, Mama Boko Haram had, in a July 6 , publication of The Guardian told the author of an article, who accosted her while she was being taken from detention to the hospital for medical treatment, that she was innocent.
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Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. The Promises, The Drama In , she strangely led a group of supposed leaders of Boko Haram to the Borno State Government House where they promised that they could prevail on their members in the bush to lay down their arms.
Support Our Journalism There are millions of ordinary people affected by conflict in Africa whose stories are missing in the mainstream media. Your donation will further promote a robust, free, and independent media. Donate Here. Abdulkareem Haruna Send an email December 16, 0. Subscribe to our telegram channel to get the stories on your phone once they arrive! Abdulkareem Haruna Abdulkareem Haruna is a Nigerian journalist who has provided extensive coverage of the Lake Chad conflict in north-eastern Nigeria for over a decade.
He previously worked as an assistant editor with Premium Times and Leadership Newspaper. Haruna has a strong knowledge of the Northeast and follows the trends in the region closely.
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