REPORT REVEALS A NEW ANGLE TO THE STORY OF RESCUED CHIBOK GIRLS, SAYS GIRLS ARE NOW BEING STIGMATIZED

image by Sunday Alamba/Associated Press

A recent report from International Alert, a peace-building group, and Unicef has shown us a whole new angle to the story of the girls rescued from Boko Haram.



These girls, after being returned to their communities by the Nigerian army are actually stigmatized and treated like outcasts. A new name has being coined for them. It is called “annoba,” which means epidemics, or “Boko Haram wives.”  The children that are products of Boko Haram taking advantage of these girls are called “hyenas among dogs.”

But why are they treated like this and ostracized? The reasons are not so far-fetched. There has been an increasing number of female suicide bombers in Nigeria.

These female suicide bombers wear their hair pulled away from their faces in a traditional burial style for women (signalling they are ready to die), quietly enter public places and detonate the bombs strapped on their bodies. Only two weeks ago, one of the girls chickened out when she found out that her parents where in the camp she was supposed to bomb.

These occurrences have made people feel that the time they have spent with Boko Haram must have seen them brainwashed, making them see nothing wrong with suicide bombing. Many Boko Haram returnees are been looked upon as potential suicide bombers in their communities, they are seen as carrying “bad blood” and would only give birth to children with bad blood.

One of the rescued pregnant women when interviewed in the report seems to also believe this. She said:

“When I think of the baby that will come, it disturbs me a lot because I always ask myself this question: Will the child also behave like JAS?” JAS is another name for Boko Haram.”

Bringing back all our girls would obviously need to go beyond rescuing them and planting them back into the communities they were taken from. A lot of psychological work still, needs to be done.


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