15-year-old Baba Goni was part of a vigilante group
who saved two of the abducted Chibok
girls,raped,beaten and left to die in the bush ..Baba
who was once abducted and lived with Boko Haram
for 2 years told his story as written by Babara Jones
of Mailonline
Their faces scratched and bleeding, the pitiful
remains of their once-smart school uniforms ripped
and filthy, the two teenage girls were tethered to
trees, wrists bound with rope and left in a clearing
in the Nigerian bush to die by Islamist terror group
Boko Haram.Despite having been raped and dragged
through the bush, they were alive – but only just – in
the sweltering tropical heat and humidity.
'They were seated on the ground at the base of the
trees, their legs stretched out in front of them – they
were hardly conscious,'
Says Baba, who acted as a guide for one of the many
vigilante teams searching for the Nigerian
schoolgirls abducted from their school last month by
Boko Haram.The horrific scene he and his comrades
encountered, a week after the kidnap early on April
15, was in thorny scrubland near the village of
Ba'ale, an hour's drive from Chibok. It was still two
weeks before social media campaigns and protests
would prick the Western world's conscience over the
abduction.
In the days following their disappearance, rag-tag
groups such as Baba's, scouring the forests in a
convoy of Toyota pick-up trucks, were the girls' only
hope.
But hope had already run out for some of the
hostages, according to Baba, when his group spoke to
the terrified inhabitants of the village where Boko
Haram had pitched camp with their captives for
three days following the kidnap.The chilling account
he received from the villagers, though unconfirmed
by official sources, represents the very worst fears
of the families of those 223 girls still missing.
Four were dead, they told him, shot by their captors
for being 'stubborn and unco-operative'. They had
been hastily buried before the brutish kidnappers
moved on.
'Everyone we spoke to was full of fear.They didn't
want to come out of their homes. They didn't want
to show us the graves. They just pointed up a track.'
The tiny rural village, halfway between Chibok and
Damboa in the besieged state of Borno in Nigeria's
north-east, had been helpless to stop the Boko
Haram gang as it swept through on trucks loaded
with schoolgirls they had taken at gunpoint before
torching their school.
Venturing further up the track, Baba and his fellow
vigilantes found the two girls. Baba, the youngest of
the group, stayed back as his friends took charge.'
They used my knife to cut through the ropes'I heard
the girls crying and telling the others that they had
been raped, then just left there. They had been with
the other girls from Chibok, all taken from the
school in the middle of the night by armed men in
soldiers' uniforms.
'We couldn't do much for them. They didn't want to
talk to any men. All we could do was to get them
into a vehicle and drive them to the security police
at Damboa. They didn't talk, they just held on to
each other and cried.'
For Baba, a peasant farmer's son who has never
been out of rural Borno, it was shocking to see
young girls defiled and brutalised by the notorious
terrorists he knew so well.But his own life has been
full of tragedy and he told how he had 'seen much
worse' than the horror of that day in the forest
clearing.
A bright-eyed Muslim boy from the Kanuri ethnic
group, proud of a tribal facial scar and nicknamed
'Small' by all who know him because of his short,
slim frame, he described a happy childhood with
three brothers and two sisters in Kachalla Burari, a
collection of mudhouses not far from Chibok.
Without electricity or running water, the children
spent their days helping on their father's subsistence
farm, planting maize and beans and millet.
One night as he slept in his family's mudhouse in the
village, the gunmen came door to door, looking for
informers.
'I heard some noise, I woke up and saw men coming
through the door, shooting at my uncle who was in
the bed beside mine.That was the end of my
childhood, the end of everything. I saw his body
covered in blood, I backed away, and the men
turned their guns on me. They grabbed me roughly
and took me outside to a pick-up truck.
Baba, telling his story confidently and lucidly, wants
to skate over the details of his two hellish years in
the Boko Haram camp in Sambisa Forest. Today
there are special forces soldiers swarming over the
vast nature reserve and circling overhead in
surveillance aircraft.
For this slight boy, there was no such worldwide
interest as he scurried back and forth at the
command of a ruthless gang dug into woodland far
from any help or rescue.
He remembers many of them lived with women who
had come voluntarily into the camp. He never saw
any girls abducted. This latest phenomenon is
unknown to him.
'There were many abducted boys, but no girls.We
were all scared to death and had to do whatever we
were told – fetch water, fetch firewood, clean the
weapons.
'We couldn't make friends – you didn't know who to
trust. I was made to sleep next to the Boko Haram
elders, the senior preachers. I had no special boss in
the camp, I was ordered around by everybody.The
men prayed five times a day yet would leap on their
motorbikes and trucks to carry out killing sprees.I
knew they had started out as holy men but now I
saw them as criminals, loaded with weapons and
ammunition,'
As he got older, he was taught how to use an AK-47,
how to strip it down and clean it, and reassemble it.
He could never understand what drove the men.
They did not use alcohol or hard drugs, though he
sometimes saw them smoking marijuana. They were
monsters and he felt convinced they were mad.
'They were wild, even when they prayed so loudly in
groups together, making us join in. They were
insane, unpredictable, and always planning their
next attack. I never wanted to be one of them.They
slept rough every night, just taking shelter under
trees in the rainy season,'We all wore the same
afaraja [the Nigerian long shift and trousers] day
and night. We washed them when we could. We
slept on mats made of palm leaves, out in the open
with the trucks all parked nearby, ready for a hasty
move if necessary.They made us work hard so it
was easy to sleep. I don't remember crying through
homesickness. I think the night when my uncle was
killed in front of me did something to my feelings
forever. It seems mindless, but I adapted to my life
out there.'
Then came the day when he was given a 'special' but
sickening task. One of the commanders told him he
was going on a journey and would be tested for his
loyalty to the group.
He brought two of his senior men to stand beside
me. He said I would be going with them to my
family's home and I would have to shoot and kill
my father.' Baba had no time to plan. He was
sandwiched between the two fanatics as they set off
on a motorbike for his village home.
'I pretended I was willing to do the job. I took the
ammunition belt I was handed and clung on as we
drove through the rough bush. When we were less
than a mile from a nearby village, I threw the
ammunition belt to the ground and pretended it had
slid out of my hands.
'They stopped to let me pick it up. Instead, I ran as
fast as I could through the undergrowth. I didn't
care about thorns or snakes or anything. They shot
at me and I could hear the bullets flying past and
hitting the trees, but I was not going to stop for
anything. I made it to the village and some kind
people let me hide there.
'The shooting would have been heard by local
vigilante groups. I think that is why I wasn't
followed by the men on the bike.'
The next day Baba went home. He saw his grieving
parents and siblings for the first time in two years.
'But I couldn't stay.I was bringing danger to their
door and we all knew it.'
Confirmation of that came when Baba soon heard
that vengeful Boko Haram chiefs had put a bounty
on his head for his defiance of the equivalent of
£12,000 – a fortune in the local economy.
'I took a bus to Damboa, to report to the youth
vigilante group.I wanted to work with them and I
knew I was doing the right thing.'
His family, terrified, abandoned their home soon
afterwards and today live in a remote part of
Borno, rarely seeing their eldest son. He lives with a
cousin who is also under a Boko Haram death
threat.
He became a valuable volunteer with the vigilantes.
He helps man checkpoints where Baba points out
members of Boko Haram to the rest of the team.
But he was soon exposed to brutality of a different
kind – this time from the government side. He
helped to get one of his captors, a man he only knew
as Alaji, arrested and handed to the soldiers.
'It felt good at first, but then they shot him dead right
in front of me,'
