Umar Bulama lay among the corpses, hoping that Boko Haram fighters would mistake him for one of the dead after a brutal weekend attack on a northern Nigerian town.
Pressing his face “into the blood-soaked sand”, Bulama, 34, was lucky: he survived Friday’s assault on the northeastern town of Darul Jamal near the Cameroonian border.
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The town was mostly abandoned after a Boko Haram assault about a decade ago, and people like Bulama had only started returning earlier this year, as the government moves to close down displaced persons camps.
But the night raid, in which the attackers torched homes, was a stark reminder that wide swathes of rural Nigeria are still outside government control, with authorities saying at least 63 were killed — and local sources putting the toll around 90.
Eventually, Bulama, who sells firewood for a living, walked for hours until he reached a military checkpoint near the town of Banki.
“I escaped… but I left my neighbours behind forever,” he said.
– Resettlement questioned –
Aisha Umar, 70, thought returning to Darul Jamal would be her final move in life. Instead, she watched Boko Haram fighters drag away her two sons during the attack.
Now staying with relatives in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State where Boko Haram first rose up in 2009, she said she felt betrayed.
“They told us it was safe to return. Safe? Look at the graves.”
Though violence has waned since its peak between 2013 and 2015, Boko Haram and the offshoot Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) still hold sway across swathes of Nigeria’s rural northeast.
The first six months of this year saw a resurgence of attacks, notably from ISWAP, with the group overrunning at least 17 military bases, according to a tally by Good Governance Africa.
“The sky was red with flames,” Ali Mustapha, a 42-year-old shopkeeper, told AFP. “Bullets were flying, children were crying. I grabbed my daughter’s hand and ran through the smoke.”
His wife did not survive.
“I buried her with my own hands,” he said. “That is the last gift I could give her.”
– ‘Ghost town’ once again –
Nigerian authorities are often tight-lipped about security failures, though Borno Governor Babagana Zulum travelled to Darul Jamal Saturday, telling reporters at least 63 people were killed.
Mommodu Isa, a local pro-government militia commander, told AFP that as of Monday “we counted at least 85 corpses”, warning that the toll could be higher as “many residents fled into the bush”.
Habiba Yusuf, an aid worker for Mon Club International who travelled to Darul Jamal, and Maryam Mamman Nur, a nurse in Banki, offered similar figures.
A spokesman for Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency operations in Borno referred AFP to the initial toll of 63.
Some have warned the massacre could unravel the fragile IDP resettlement process — which critics say was already moving too quickly, sending people back to areas that the government has little or incomplete control over.
The camp closures have come as NGOs have pulled back, leaving the government to shoulder more of the burden for running the camps.
“This attack has undone years of progress,” Yusuf said.
“Darul Jamal is once again a ghost town.”
AFP