Over 59 women and an undisclosed number of children have been abducted by Boko Haram in Michika and Gulak communities in Adamawa State, locals reported on Monday, September 15, 2014.
The insurgents kidnapped the women and children of which locals in the community put the number at over a hundred.
A resident in Husra village in Michika, Mallam Musa Yaro-Uba Musa, revealed that hundreds of people including women and children in the northern part of Adamawa State were languishing in the custody of the insurgents.
Confirming the incident to Thisday, a security source said the sect members had called women last Saturday to collect food items from them at Gulak, the secretariat of Madagali Local Government Area, following which they selected some of them and took them away.
Also, a politician in the area, Mr. Maina Ularamu, said: “The information I have is that they selected some women and locked them in the local government secretariat.”
Another resident of Gulak, who escaped from the area, said at least 50 young women were seized by the insurgents from Gulak town on Saturday after the victims were assembled at a prayer ground.
Boko Haram members have been running amok in Madagali, Gulak and Michika despite efforts by the Nigerian military to flush them out.
A resident, who identified himself simply as Tija, said he got the news of the abduction when he was trapped in a village near Gulak before his subsequent escape to Yola, the Adamawa State capital, on Sunday.
He revealed that the victims, including married women, were loaded on to trucks and taken away despite passionate pleas to the insurgents to spare them.
“Some women brought the news that Boko Haram forcibly took some of them away including a sister-in-law of a friend of mine. The situation is getting worse by the day, our hope is that this problem will end one day,” he stated.
However, a source said old men and sick persons who are incapacitated and unable to escape due to their conditions were left to the whims of the sect.
He claimed members of the sect had been feeding them on a daily basis and had assured them of maximum security, adding that his father was among the old men still in the custody of the sect.
He said everyday, the sect members allow his father to call him on the phone, assuring him that he is well taken care of by the insurgents and he need not worry about him.
Also, Musa, the Michika resident, disclosed that able-bodied youths were being conscripted by the terrorists, after attempts at indoctrination by the insurgents to recruit new members had failed to get them as volunteers.
Musa said members of Boko Haram had carried out several preaching sessions in the recent past to convert and recruit new members into the sect which had proved unsuccessful, hence the decision to conscript youths into the sect.
“The insurgents conducted preaching sessions to attract converts to their midst but people only listened out of fear. They next day, they asked if anybody wanted to join them but there was no response, so they selected many healthy-looking young men and asked them to go with them.
“One of the victims is my relative who did body building exercises regularly,” he stated.
President Goodluck Jonathan responding to the humanitarian crisis in the North-east has directed the immediate release of relief materials worth N1.5 billion to Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states which are most affected by the insurgency.
