Sad tales of Michika people traumatised by Boko Haram for being their brothers’ keepers
By Billy Graham, Abel-Yola
Overlooking Michika town is the captivating scenery of undulating Mukula, Mitrea and Gagulumu mountains of the Michika people in the northern part of Adamawa State.
The Mukula, Mitrea and Gagulumu people have lived in the mountains as the ancestral home of the Michika people. All they had to do to attract the rage of Boko Haram terrorists was to provide shelter for their kinsmen running from the insurgents in the difficult mountainous terrain.
The enraged Boko Haram fundamentalists, incensed by this, pursued the Michika people up into the unfamiliar mountains, but, the people of Mukula, Mitra and Gagwamu who knew the mountains too well, ran into caves, holes and other parts of the mountains for safety, leaving only their too young and old people to be killed and burnt. In the angry backlash, the Boko Haram fighters burnt down their victims’ houses, barns, livestock, and other prized possessions to ashes.
Survivors of the carnage share their experiences with Saturday Sun.
One of them, Juliet Timothy, 28, a married woman and mother of four, a native of Mukula Mountain in Michika detailed her experience in an encounter with Saturday Sun. She said: “We live here on this mountain, we don’t fear anything, so we never thought Boko Haram will come near us. On that fateful evening, when terrorists attacked us unexpectedly, I ran with my four children, including my youngest baby, I could not take anything from the house or an extra wrapper to swaddle her on my back, she was just one year old then, as we were running, she slipped out of my hands and bumped her head against a rock and collapsed. She later died because of the impact of the head injury.” 
Juliet said: “After they left we returned to our homes, nothing was left. No water, no one to treat the sick or injured, we were on our own.”
Joshua Nuhu Umaru, a 54 year -old father of eight, said of his own ordeal: “On the day Boko Haram came, we were in church. All of a sudden we started hearing distant gunshots from Michika. I gathered my eight children and ran for safety. By then our people from Bazza, below the mountain had begun to climb up to our place here on the mountain. We welcomed them into our homes, we shared our food with them unfortunately we soon ran out of food, but thanks to God we have a lot of guava fruits, we relied on. After several days, we gathered from our local intelligence that the Boko Haram people were approaching, so we ran into the town and told everyone to run for safety. That was how everyone gathered; some ran into caves and holes and wherever they could go beyond the reach of the militants. We were there for three days without food and water. When we returned, they had burnt down everything, we had nothing left. It was rainy season then, so we just squatted around rocks as our shelter. We didn’t have water, no food, and no help from anyone, except from one organization, OXFAM, that brought some relief materials to us.
“When we heard the military had taken over we used to stealthily sneak into the town market to get some food, so that we can survive.
I am a farmer; I did not go to school, because my parent did not send me to school. I have lived here all my life. I joined the vigilance group to help safeguard my community. “Our quiet lives have been shattered by the insurgency, for some of us it took our entire lifetime to build our houses and acquire everything that was destroyed, we don’t have the money to repair or replace anything we’d lost and since this insurgency happened no government help has ever reached us. We just heard that government was helping people, but not us.
“Whenever anyone is sick we have to carry him or her down on our head to a hospital in the town below the mountain. Some of them die on our way down; some who are lucky get to the hospital alive. I will like to call on the government to look into our plight and help us; we need basic things like water, hospital and schools or even fertilizer. We still live in fear; we don’t trust strangers, so we are always careful.”
Mary Umaru, 65, mother of eight, wife of a late retired soldier, lost two of her sons, who left for the city even before the Boko Haram invasion. The duo, she said, never returned and it has been 10 years ago. But, she was able to live a comfortable life with the retirement benefits of her late husband, a house and a grinding machine, he left her.
However, Mama Mary, as she is affectionately called, hid in the cleft of a rock, watching Boko Haram terrorists torch her house, her herd of about 20 goats, her dog with its new puppies, a barn of groundnuts, maize and beans.
Mama Mary said: “After they left I came out, I cried bitterly because I have lost my husband and these are all he left me, who will build a house for me, I cried. They erased everything I and my husband built together all our lives.”
Mama Mary further lamented: “I and my children have just been helpless since then, and we live with whatever we get. No one has helped us, except for one organization that brought us some food.”
Away from Michika, unto the outskirts of Yola, is an Internally Displaced Persons settlement at Malkohi, in Yola north. It houses about 400 households, who fled from the insurgency from Gwoza, through Madagali and Cameroun. An amazingly extended stretch of camping tents where these families now live, with some having spent over three years.
Fatima, from Gwoza, a mother of four children has been living for the past three years in the Malkohi community settlement. She was captured and held captive for three months by Boko Haram. She narrates her experience with the terrorists. “When the Boko Haram came to our village, all the men left, because they were killing only men, they captured many of us women and kept us in a very secured building with high walls. They usually provided corn flour, soup ingredients and sometimes they would kill a goat and give us to cook.
That was how we survived. We were all women and I can’t count how many women there, but the place was overcrowded, there was little space.
Later they broke us into two groups and moved us into another building. This place was a little bit less secure than the first place.
“After we have been held for about three months, they threatened to marry us off by force, if we didn’t choose a husband from within the period of two months. So, some of us planned to escape. In the middle of the night we helped each other to climb the fence and escape. We escaped on foot and walked for 24 hours before reaching Madagali. From there we trekked for days before reaching a border town in Cameroun. The traditional ruler of the village called the Lawan received us well, the people we met there, both Christians and Muslims were kind to us.
“However, some of the villagers and vigilante members were very skeptical and suspicious of us; they were accusing us of staying and cooking for the Boko Haram fighters.
We had to explain to them that we were held against our will and how we suffered. After several days there, they helped us find a vehicle that took us to Mokolo from Mokolo we got a vehicle that brought us to Yola.
“After two months I received a phone call from my husband that he was in Yola. We have left everything behind, so life is not easy. 
I used to be a tailor and knit traditional Hausa caps, I have begun to do just that here, because I called one of my relatives in Abuja who heard of my escape, he was the one who sent this sewing machine to me.”
Speaking to Saturday Sun about her impression of the people’s plight, Bimbo Akintola after visiting Michika, said: “These people are amazing, not because of what they are going through, but because of their touching simplicity and approach to life. I sang with them and they were willing to share a song with me and were thanking me for sharing a song with them. I was discussing with one of the women appreciating her beautiful baby, I said the baby looked like her and that the baby is so cute, that was when she explained to me that the baby’s mother was dead, she just took over the responsibility of raising the baby. I was stunned. That is what it means to be your brother’s keeper.”
Akintola described the people as her true Nigerian heroes for opening up their homes on the mountains for their kins downhill and suffering the consequence.
“These people for me are the true Nigerian heroes; these are everyday Nigerian heroes that deserve help from the government and every Nigerian,” she said, adding: “I will like to call on every Nigerian that has the heart and the means to give, to please give something to help these people.
Onye Ubanatu, a documentary film maker, chronicling the challenges of the internally displaced persons in the north east, said: “I have travelled to manyplaces filming, but my journey to Michika was wow! When we started travelling from Yola, what you see is that you moved away from a busy city life to a place with heavily guarded military checkpoints everywhere, to sights of a gulf on the road created by bomb blast, to a broken bridge connecting Michika and the rest of the town on the other side, to houses brought down by bombs, to bullet holes on school walls, like some kind of war graffiti, you can read on their faces that these people have been traumatized, yet they have the capacity to love.
“From what I have seen,” Onye added, “we need the government to go beyond providing relief materials to rebuilding and empowering these communities to live again. They have lost so much and need help; surprisingly they are so warm and loving.
“I have seen victims of the insurgency, cutting across both sides of the religions, so many Muslims who refuse to stand with Boko Haram were killed, so we have a lot that unites us than those things that divides. These people are a representation of the strength of Nigeria.
They have no sense of religious or tribal differences, everywhere we enter, and you can feel the love and the energy of their humanity. I have already conceptualised many projects to carry out here and tell their story.”