For every second that insurgents breathe in air, other members of the society lose theirs. For so many years, the terrorists have planted a bane in the North to terrify Northern Nigeria and claim thousands of lives; disrupting livelihoods and access to essential services for children and their families.
At first, when it all started, it appeared to be a nightmare that would go away at dawn but many years have gone by and we are not waking out of the menace as more and more people and property continue to be brutally murdered and destroyed following these unprovoked attacks by the insurgents. Nearly one million homes and 5,000 classrooms have been razed in the protracted onslaughts.
While these insurgents are in top gear killing and destroying, they also engage actively in the recruitment of young men as foot soldiers to continue to infiltrate the nooks and crannies to propagate these bloodbaths. Since 2009, more than 8,000 girls and boys have been recruited and used as child soldiers in different roles by these rebels. While many of these youths willfully join the insurgents due to poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, and weak family structures, many of the other recruitees are forcefully conscripted into these groups by the insurgents who leverage threats of all forms to bring the unwilling recruitees to submission.This would begin the travails of Bashiru Ibrahim.
Bashiru according to a source this writer would describe as reliable had an elderly friend whom he considered his boss was a member of this deadly group but unknown to Bashiru despite many years of being around him. The true identity of Bashiru`s boss would begin to come to light following the bombing at St. Theresa Catholic Church Madalla during the Christmas morning Mass which left at least 44 people dead and several others injured. According to this source, Bashiru`s master had for a long time been trying to lure Bashiru into his group to become one of the foot soldiers to comb the nooks and crannies of the north planting bombs and banes into communities and her institutions. So after the Madalla bombing, working with hints supplied by his boss to the group, young Bashiru was abducted by this terrorist group to undergo initiation into the sect to ready him for the task of turning peaceful communities into Madhouses. Bashiru and other young men were captured and locked in a dark room for this purpose.
As fate would have it, two days after their abduction, men of the Nigerian army busted the hideout and dislodged the criminals. While the fire exchange continued between the army and the outlaws, Bashir and other captives escaped the facility and that was not going to shut the door to his nightmare, instead, his escape opened broader and more dangerous doors where his peace of mind and life security walked off leaving a Bashiru with thousands of headaches to take a panadol for.A few days after his escape, the captors traced him to his house but luckily for him, that night he was not home. The criminals were angry to have met his absence during the dark and quiet night when they thought it was the best time for their net to capture their victim and by morning he would wake in their custody again but fate treated them unkindly and they, in turn, left no stone unturned as the ransacked and broke every valuable item in the home of the Bashir.
. Bashiru`s phone was always alive whenever friends and family called to check on him, the deadly group too continued to make contact with him requesting him to avail himself to them or shoulder the blame if his loved ones kissed their graves. This threat almost smoked Bashir out of his hiding place but if the pursuers kept hope, he dashed their hopes and didn’t surface. One fateful morning, Bashir received a call from his father who was at the time of these events resident in Niger state while Bashir`s mother lived in their hometown Benin, the Edo state capital. He informed Bashir that a group of bloodcurdling men stormed his home and asked that he either provided his son Bashiru or sacrifice his life and that of his other family members if he failed to point them to his son Bashiru, according to the information made available to the write.
If Bashiru had thought this was a game initially, I am sure by now it became clearer that this deadly group was out for serious business, and the only way to continue alive into the next stage of the game was if he left the country. The travel process took a while but it was brought to a fine finish and he left the country, leaving behind his parents and siblings behind. His family was as good as left in the open as his boss; the ones with ties to the insurgents knew some basic detail about his family and their whereabouts.He must have thought his leaving would bring him a breath of fresh air but no, he had no right to such luxury, at least not when the harramists were still on his tail and his boss was ready to supply more wood to fry him on the hot plate for his blatant refusal to corporate with a group he served in.
Years after Bashiru left the shores of the country, news of his father, Step-Mother and Step-Mother’s Sister murder reached him. The terrorists had kept to their word. According to my source, they stormed Mr. Nasir Ibrahim’s home in the dead of the night and murdered him, his wife who was heavily pregnant and her sister the care-giver, in cold blood when he could not provide his son to them upon request that night.
bombers have continued to issue death threats to everyone related to Bashiru.As devastating as this was, it would not mark an end to Bashiru`s journey on the sorrowful path of life. He continued to receive calls from his siblings one way or the other, that the bad guys were still looking frantically for him.
As if that was the end to his agony, November 2022, Bashiru had received another call from one of his siblings that his Mother, Mrs. Maria Ibrahim has been sent to her grave by the insurgents who again stormed her home in Benin City of Edo state asking after Bashiru. When they didn’t get the desired response from his mother, they shot her in the head and chest too many times those who followed the sounds of the shots lost count and leaving some of his siblings in severe injuries. Bashiru’s elderly friend who is also his boss,who is presumed to be the major informant on Bashiru case has not been heard of or seen since bashiru has escaped from the den of his captors, the religious extremist.
The big questions are whether Bashiru ever returns to this land of his nightmares and how long before these rebels wipe off the footprints of his relatives in this motherland Nigeria as it is almost clear now that the insurgents have eyes in the sky and hence no hiding place for Bashiru`s family members who are still within the walls of the motherland. Sadly, the motherland has been turned into a murder land for Bashiru`s family. While efforts have been made to know the position of the Security agencies and the case of Bashiru Ibrahim, the remaining members of the Bashiru’s Family has resulted to go underground following threats upon countless threat.
– Aguredam, a public affairs analyst writes from Abuja .
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