Maryamu was kidnapped in 2012 alongside 21 others following an attack on her village by Boko Haram.
She has recounted the horrors she faced, including being forced to marry an Islamist, and being caged for a whole year when she refused to give in to the marriage demands.
“After a killing spree that left countless dead, they took 22 of us into a thick forest, we trekked for 22 days before arriving at our destination. They put the Christians in cages, like animals. The first thing they did was forcefully convert us to Islam. They changed my name to Aisha, a Muslim name, and warned us not to pray as Christians, or we would be killed,” Maryamu has narrated in the Tuesday, October 25 ACN report.
She continues, “When I turned 10, they wanted to marry me to one of their bosses, but I refused. As punishment, they locked me in a cage for an entire year. They brought food once a day and pushed it under the door without ever opening the cage.”
The Nigerian Christian girl told ACN that in November 2019, two of her siblings were also kidnapped and brought to the same camp where she was being held.
She recounted the horror she experienced when the militants beheaded her brother right in front of her and then dismembered his body.
Maryamu shared the trauma she experienced from witnessing the beheading of her brother, saying, “I started having nightmares, I started hallucinating. I saw people and heard voices that I don’t even know. Sometimes armed people came close to me, to hurt me. When I screamed, I would feel a hand on my shoulder, and one of my fellows would say: ‘Calm down! Breathe! You will be fine.’ That was when I realized it was just a dream.”
The 16-year-old Nigerian girl narrated to the charity foundation the events of her escape from captivity in July. Unfortunately, she said, she could not manage to bring her younger sister with her when she escaped.
She narrated to ACN the July 8 escape in the middle of the night, saying, “The camp was quiet, and everybody was asleep except my fellow hut members and I. The twelve of us decided to run away. At first, I was confused whether to stay because of my younger sister, who was in another hut, but I figured I could spend the rest of my life in this camp, so I had to leave, no matter what.”
“We snuck out of the camp and ran through the thick forest. We kept going as long as our legs would carry us, for two days, until we finally arrived in Maiduguri on 10 July 2022. When we arrived, I fainted, and when I woke up, I was in the arms of a good Samaritan. He gave us water and food to recover our strength and later I came to the Church-run camp,” she narrated.
