Adamu Musa, 43, was in his bed, watching over his pregnant wife when some soldiers broke into his house in Borno State on Nov. 20, 2013.
His wife, Sahadatu, who had been pregnant for eight months, woke up swiftly and sat upright in their bed with her eyes wide open.
“He is the one,” the soldiers said as they dragged Adamu out.
Though a mechanic working and living in the Gomari airport area of Maiduguri, Borno’s capital, the soldiers accused him of being a Boko Haram member.
Like Adamu, three other neighbours were handcuffed and driven to Giwa army barracks, a facility infamous for the torture of Boko Haram suspects.
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They were detained indefinitely under inhumane conditions and prevented from seeing with relatives or lawyers.
According to Adamu, there were hundreds of people detained in the barracks. Two weeks after repeated torture and brutality, one of those arrested alongside Adamu, died.
The deceased was allegedly buried without telling his relatives.
Unlike others who spent years in detention, Adamu was quite lucky because his father is a retired soldier. He was on Dec. 22, 2013.
By the time he stepped out of the barracks, he collapsed because he could not walk for long. The soldiers had broken his leg while in jail. In fact, he had to go to the hospital for a complete one year to treat his leg before he could walk properly.
According to Amnesty International, those who died at Giwa barracks alone between 2011 and 2020 could be up to 10,000. In March 2014, Boko Haram insurgents breached the facility, freeing hundreds of other members of the sect who had been held there as part of the government’s efforts to stamp out the insurgency.
The controversial operation led to the killing of many suspected ex-detainees by soldiers who claimed they were preventing the attackers from re-absorbing their fellow sect members.
Many years after the incident, Adamu now squats with a friend in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja as he searches for a job to take care of his wife and eight children.
