A middle-aged man, Mike Kanu, who claimed to have escaped from Boko Haram dungeon in 2016, has expressed frustration with the country’s authorities, claiming to have been abandoned while he is on the wanted list of the insurgents. Kanu in a statement issued in Lagos at the weekend, recalled his ordeal in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, saying he was yet to overcome the trauma arising from his experience.
“In October, 2015, I was kidnapped by Boko Haram insurgents on my way to Maiduguri and was in their confinement for months.
“On January 26, 2016, however, they said I had to go for an operation for them and I was given a jacket made of bomb, to go to a church in Chibok village, Borno, to kill some Christians.
“That, I could not do because I am a Christian but I played along to secure my freedom, and with the help of the pastor of the church. I escaped,” he recalled.
Kanu lamented that since that incident, he had been uprooted from his legitimate trading business in the North, as the insurgents declared him wanted and even issued a fatwa (order to kill) against him.
“Since that occurrence, my life has become meaningless as a result of several traumas that I suffered,” he said, noting that he had virtually become a migrant in his own country.
“My case is like the case of many others who are never attended to by the authorities. I’ve made appeal to government to no avail so that I can get support to begin life afresh,” he further regretted. Kanu, thus, appealed to well-spirited Nigerians for assistance to “help me so that I can put the traumatic experience behind me and move on with life.”
