Sambisa: 214 Pregnant Rescued Girls Sign Of Crisis – Gov Shettima

9 years ago

Sambisa: 214 Pregnant Rescued Girls Sign Of Crisis – Gov Shettima

Borno State governor Kashim Shettima yesterday expressed worry that the country may still have to contend with the unborn offspring of Boko Haram terrorists following the revelation that 214 of the women and girls rescued from the notorious Sambisa Forest are currently pregnant for the insurgents.

The pregnant females were part of 234 women and children rescued from Sambisa Forest following an offensive by Nigerian soldiers aided by troops from neighbouring countries.

Nigeria soldiers have in the past week rescued about 700 women, girls and children from the den of Boko Haram terrorists in Sambisa Forest in Borno State, but over 200 of them have been discovered to be carrying pregnancies of various months, ostensibly for their kidnappers who were thought to have routinely raped them and forced them to marry their abductors.

Governor Shettima has warned that the pregnancies, rather than being sources of joy to the society, are actually a source of future trouble as the women could reproduce future terrorists.

The governor was quoted in a press statement issued yesterday by his spokesman, Isa Gusau, as saying in a meeting that Boko Haram members deliberately, and forcefully, impregnated the women in order to reproduce their descendants who would naturally imbibe the Boko Haram ideology and carry on with the ways of their illegitimate forebears.

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Shettima’s spokesman said his boss made the observation while addressing some government officials at a closed-door meeting in Maiduguri at the weekend.

“Boko Haram insurgents deliberately raped women with the intention of getting them pregnant so they would give birth to future insurgents as successors of their violent struggles, hence the need for a special programme to break the chain anticipated by the insurgents,” the governor stated yesterday.

Shettima said from his studies of practices associated with the insurgents, there is a general belief amongst them that whoever does not share their ideology was an infidel and as such his wife and property could be freely acquired by the sect’s members, with their wives serving as sex slaves of their masters.

The governor also said that the insurgents also believe that children fathered by them were likely to share their ideology later in life and take up their parents’ bloody struggle once again.

“I am happy at the recovery of hundreds of women and children; it is a thing of joy that they have been freed alive”, Shettima said.

“However, I also very worried about what the future holds for us if what I have gathered about these insurgents works according to their plan. These people (Boko Haram) have a certain spiritual conviction that any child they father will grow to inherit their ideology, whether the live with the children or not.

“They also believe that whoever does not hold their ideology is an unbeliever that should be killed and rendered homeless and whatever belongs to him or her becomes a legitimate booty recovered from enemies. This booty includes women that are then allocated to ranking leaders of the sect as sex slaves.

“The sect leaders make very conscious efforts to impregnate the women; some of them, I am told, even pray before mating, offering supplications for God to make the products of what they are about doing become children that will inherit their ideology.

“After getting their captives pregnant, they keep them to allow the pregnancy to mature to an extent of say four or more months, to make abortion difficult or impossible for the women due to the risk to their lives in carrying out abortions at that level. They abandon the women afterwards to go and give birth anywhere else. In most cases, the women return home or get helped by traditional birth attendants.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if, in some cases, some of the women deliver in captivity and the children grow to four or five years since the sect has been operating for years. Perhaps the Sambisa camps might have been in existence since 2009 or afterwards.”

The governor remarked that the sect operates medical teams and shift clinics for attending to the pregnant women, treating injured men and addressing other health challenges.

He continued: “I do not have any official information yet regarding these issues, but I have read from some online media houses that many girls were rescued with visible pregnancy and some with newly born babies.

“Of course, I expect our security agencies to establish the paternity of all children recovered from the victims. My major concern is how we, as stakeholders from the federal and state governments, will manage women that might be affected.”

Shettima expressed worry that the women might reject such children that resulted from such traumatic experiences.

“I am seriously worried at the fact that most women tend to hate and abandon children they deliver from rape. Now, the problem is that these children could go to the streets unattended to; they then lack access to food, healthcare and education. The result is that they could indeed inherit their fathers’ traits somehow.

“We also don’t know whether the sect’s members would, after putting a woman in the family way, identify them with particular communities and put a mechanism to monitor the children and whisk them away in future.

“So, after establishing the paternity of the children and background of those found to be pregnant, the federal government will have to work with state governments whose citizens are affected, so that we get the involvement of medical and psychosocial specialists as well as child welfare experts so that we deal with the situation by properly, documenting these kids without getting them stigmatized, monitoring and working towards raising these kids to become educated future leaders without the slightest ideologies of their fathers in order for us to cut the cycle being envisaged.”

According to the Borno governor, managing this issue well now is vital in safeguarding the future of the affected communities.

“We must show love to these innocent children; we should support the innocent mothers. This is equally in our enlightened self-interest” Shettima concluded.