Family Members Protest Detention of Boko Haram Suspects

Some women and children Thursday marched
on the streets of Maiduguri, demanding the
release of their husbands, fathers and sons
who were detained for being members of the
outlawed Boko Haram sect.
They demanded that either the suspects
should be released or they should be told if
they are no longer alive.
The protesters, numbering about 100,
addressed journalists at the premises of the
Borno Radio Television (BRTV) where they had
gone to register their protest.
They alleged that most of their husbands,
sons and fathers had been taken away by
military operatives and detained for different
periods ranging from eight months to over one
year.
One of the women, Ya'hadiza Bulama Musa,
an official of the University of Maiduguri
Teaching Hospital, told journalists that most
of their husbands and children arrested by the
soldiers were innocent.
She wondered why they were still being kept in
custody, without anyone telling them the truth
about their state of being.
Ya'hadiza, who was close to tears, said two of
her sons, Mustapha Tijjani Bukar and Allamin
Sule Tijani, both graduates, were arrested
while they were driving out of their streets at
Ngomari Junction on June 6 and since then,
she had not seen them.
"Our children are not Boko Haram members;
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 fathers and I," she
said.
A 14-year-old boy, Bashir Zarami, who broke
down in tears while recounting his ordeal,
narrated that his father was arrested in his
presence and since then he could no longer go
to school or feed himself properly.
He said: "My father is a provision seller there
at Bayan Quarters area. I was with him on the
day soldiers came to our shop some eight
months ago (February) and began to beat us,
asking us to lay down with our faces to the
ground. After trampling 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 protester, Halima Isa, said her son,
Yahaya, 30, was a furniture maker in
Maiduguri when security personnel arrested
him while trying to pray at home.
She urged the state government to intervene
to secure his release along with others.