Aisha, wife of a suspected Boko Haram commander,
has abandoned her family home in Maiduguri, Borno
state capital, taking along the son fathered by the
suspect identified as Mamman Nur.

The 25-year-old is one of the 70 women and children
who finished a nine-month deradicalisation
programme in February.

Last year, they were captured by the army in a raid on
the militants’ Sambisa forest base.

According to Bintu Yerima, her younger, Aisha took her
baby, some of her clothes and vanished after receiving
a call from a woman.

“Before she left … she had received a phone call from a
woman who was with her (in the programme),” 22-
year-old Yerima told the Thomson Reuters
Foundation.

“The woman said that she had returned to the
Sambisa forest.”

Bintu added that phone calls to Aisha after she
disappeared went unanswered, and her mobile has
since been switched off.

Her disappearance has stoked concern about the
difficulty of deradicalising and reintegrating women
seized by the group.

Eighty-two of the abducted girls were last month
swapped with some members of the militant group
after negotiations between the federal government and
the sect.

One of the released girl was unwilling to return
because she had found a husband.

Fatima Akilu, a psychologist and head of the Neem
Foundation, an anti-extremism group which ran the
state-backed programme, said she had heard that
some of the women who were under her care, including
Aisha, had gone back to Boko Haram.

She said some of the girls wanted to go back because
they felt at home and powerful even while in captivity,
adding that another reason could be the shame and
trauma that comes from the society.

“Rehabilitation, reintegration is a long process …
complicated by the fact we have an active, ongoing
insurgency.” Akilu said.

“When you have fathers, husbands, sons and brothers
who are still in the movement, they (the women) want
to be reunited … to go back to a place where they feel
they belong.”

Thousands of girls and women have been abducted by
Boko Haram since 2009 – most notably the more than
200 Chibok girls snatched one night from their school
in April 2014 – with many of them used as cooks, sex
slaves, and even suicide bombers.

Yet some of these women, like Aisha, say they
managed to gain respect, influence and standing
within the militant group.

Aisha reportedly told the Thomson Reuters Foundation
earlier this year that other women kidnapped by Boko
Haram were given to her as “slaves” because she was
married to a leading militant.

Seduced by the power, and disenchanted with the
domestic drudgery of their everyday lives, women are
far more difficult than men to deradicalise and
reintegrate into their communities, said Akilu, who
called for more support for the former captives.

“Women often come out successful from
deradicalisation programmes, but they struggle in the
community,” Akilu said.

“Some face a lot of stigma. They feel like pariahs.”

TheCable