16-year-old former captive says she still misses her Boko Haram husband

One year after Zara John, a 16-year-old girl, was rescued from Boko Haram captivity, she is still longing to return to where she called home before the intervention of security forces.

The only daughter of her mother, Zara was abducted in February 2014 when the insurgents raided her village of Izge, in Borno state.

As common with such attacks, homes were razed, men slaughtered, and women and girls – including Zara – loaded into trucks.

According to Thomson Reuters Foundation, which spoke with the teenager, Zara said the first two months at the camp were tough until she was given out in marriage to Ali, a Boko Haram commander.

“After I became a commander’s wife, I had freedom. I slept anytime I wanted, I woke up anytime I wanted,” she was quoted as saying.

“He bought me food and clothes and gave me everything that a woman needs from a man,” adding that he also gave her a mobile phone with his number plugged in; and he tattooed his name on her stomach to mark her as a Boko Haram wife.

Ali assured her that the fight would soon be over and they would return to his home town of Baga where he intended his new wife to join his fishing business.

He told her that he had abandoned his fisherman trade and joined the militant group after his father and elder brother, both fishermen like himself, were killed by Nigerian soldiers.

Ali was not at home when the Nigerian army stormed the militant base in Bita, Borno state, in March 2015 and rescued Zara and scores of other women, taking them to a refugee camp in Yola, capital of Adamawa state.

But Zara and Ali stayed in touch by phone until the soldiers, who realised some of the girls in the camp were still in touch with their abductors, seized their phones and moved them to another camp until they were reunited with their families.

She was delighted to discover that she was pregnant with his child following a urine and blood test carried out by a doctor in the refugee camp to which she was taken after her rescue.

“I wanted to give birth to my child so that I can have someone to replace his father since I cannot reconnect with him again,” said Zara.

But any decision over the baby was taken out of her hands. Her father had drowned in a flooding incident in 2010, so her uncles intervened. Some were adamant they did not want a Boko Haram offspring in their family and insisted on an abortion; others felt the child should not be blamed for the father’s crimes.

In the end, the majority carried the vote and Zara was allowed to keep her child, a son she named Usman who is now about seven months old.

“Everybody in the family has embraced the child,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “My uncle just bought him tins of Cerelac (instant cereal) and milk.”

Though Zara now stays with her family, she said she would rather be with her Boko Haram husband.

“If I had my way, I would retrieve the phone number he gave me,” she said, expressing regrets that she did not commit his number to memory.