Twenty-year-old Jumai Haruna spent the last two years in Sambisa forest, the stronghold of the extremist Islamic sect, Boko Haram. Four months ago, she was rescued by the security forces. She left the forest with a large scar from a bullet wound on her arm.
But as she spoke to a Punch correspondent, last week, at the Internally Displaced Persons’ camp in Yola, Adamawa State.
The story that Haruna shared was a tale of rape, abuse, forced labour, torture and her forced marriage to one of the terrorists.
“I would never have married such a man but we were all forced to marry them or be killed,” she said with growing bitterness. “I lost a pregnancy for my original husband because of the condition of the place.” Haruna’s ‘original husband’ was the man she married shortly before she was captured by Boko Haram.
