Some women and children on Thursday marched on the streets of Maiduguri, demanding the release of their husbands, fathers and sons who were detained for being members of the outlawed Boko Haram sect.
They demanded that either the suspects be released or they be told if they are no longer alive.
The protesters, numbering about 100, addressed journalists at the premises of the Borno Radio Television (BRTV) where they had gone to register their protest.
They alleged that most of their husbands, sons and fathers had been taken away by military operatives and detained for different periods ranging from eight months to over one year.
One of the women, Ya’hadiza Bulama Musa, an official of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, told Thisday journalists that most of their husbands and children arrested by the soldiers were innocent.
She wondered why they were still being kept in custody, without anyone telling them the truth about their state of being.
Ya’hadiza, who was close to tears, said two of her sons, Mustapha Tijjani Bukar and Allamin Sule Tijani, both graduates, were arrested while they were driving out of their streets at Ngomari Junction on June 6 and since then, she had not seen them.
“Our children are not Boko Haram members; they were arrested innocently and wrongly by the JTF who labelled them Boko Haram. I am a mother and should know my children better. If they are Boko Haram, I will not be here wasting my time. But I know my children, they are educated just like their father and I,” she said.
A 14-year-old boy, Bashir Zarami, who broke down in tears while recounting his ordeal, narrated that his father was arrested in his presence and since then he could no longer go to school or feed himself properly.
He said: “My father is a provision seller there at Bayan Quarters area. I was with him on the day soldiers came to our shop some eight months ago (February) and began to beat us, asking us to lay down with our faces to the ground. After trampling on us, they dragged my father out and took him away. Since then I was left alone. I don’t know my mother, my father brought me up alone. Now I have no one, I cannot go to school, and no one to feed me, except I beg. Please Governor Kashim should assist me to free my father; they said he is in Giwa Barracks, and I cannot go there.”
Another protester, Halima Isa, said her son, Yahaya, 30, was a furniture maker in Maiduguri when security personnel arrested him while trying to pray at home.
She urged the state government to intervene to secure his release along with others.
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