Boko Haram: Lady runs back to captor after he marries new wife

A lady, rescued by Nigerian Forces after being abducted and forced to marry her Boko Haram captor, has ran back to him after she heard he had taken a new wife.

The lady, Aisha Yerima 25, ran back to her husband, who held her prisoners in Nigeria, when she received information that he had married another wife.

According to dailymail report, Aisha was abducted by Boko Haram members four years and dragged to Sambisa forest. Later, she was forced to marry one of the commanders.

The reports states: “Aisha is said to be among 70 women and children rescued by the Nigerian Forces sometimes in February. She was placed in a deradicalisation programme intended for women seized by jihadists.”

Less than three months after her rescue, Aisha escaped from her family home in Borno State, taking her clothes and the baby boy fathered by her Boko Haram husband.

Relatives claimed that Aisha received a phone call from another woman who said she had returned to live with her captors.

Her sister, Bintu Yerima said Aisha's 'husband' was now with a woman who had been her rival. 

Bintu said: “Before she left, she had received a phone call from a woman who was with her, in the programme; the woman said that she had returned to the Sambisa forest.'

Phone calls to Aisha after she disappeared went unanswered, and her mobile has since been switched off, her sister added.

Daily explained that Fatima Akilu, a psychologist and head of the Neem Foundation, an anti-extremism group which ran the state-backed programme, said she had heard that some of the women who were under her care, including Aisha, had gone back to Boko Haram.

Akilu said: “Rehabilitation, reintegration is a long process, complicated by the fact we have an active, ongoing insurgency. When you have fathers, husbands, sons and brothers who are still in the movement, they, the women, want to be reunited, to go back to a place where they feel they belong.

“Seduced by the power, and disenchanted with the domestic drudgery of their everyday lives, women are far more difficult than men to deradicalise and reintegrate into their communities.

Boko Haram's bloody campaign to create an Islamic state is now in its eighth year with little sign of ending, and has claimed more than 20,000 lives and uprooted 2.7 million people.

Aisha told the Thomson Reuters Foundation earlier this year that other women kidnapped by Boko Haram were given to her as 'slaves' because she was married to leading militant Mamman Nur.

Akilu noted: “Women often come out successful from deradicalisation programmes, but they struggle in the community. Some face a lot of stigma. They feel like pariahs. It needs a lot of work to get communities to accept women who have done the almost unthinkable. Trying to reintegrate is especially difficult when Boko Haram are carrying out their atrocities almost every week.”