- Safiu Kehinde
Six years after being abducted, a Nigerian nurse, Alice Loksha, finally regained her freedom following her escape from Boko Haram’s captivity.
Loaksha, who had been a health worker for the UN children’s agency UNICEF in the northeast, was presented to reporters at a military base in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.
She was taken on March 1, 2018 when fighters from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) group staged a deadly raid on a humanitarian camp housing 60,000 displaced people.
Three more UNICEF health workers were killed in the attack, along with eight soldiers.
Also abducted during the attack were with two Nigerian midwives — Saifura Khorsa and Hauwa Liman — who had been working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
The pair were alter killed by ISWAP who said they are Muslims and as such supposed to know the consequences of working with a foreign organization.
For Loksha, they said, would be spared and turned into a sex slave because she is Christian.
On October 24 this year, Loksha managed to escape her captors from a camp in Dogon Chukwu island in Lake Chad, Major General Kenneth Chigbu told reporters.
Five days later, she contacted the troops in the town of Geidam in neighbouring Yobe State, he said.
Another woman, Faina Ali Kelawos, who was held by ISWAP for two years, also managed to escape and appeared at the news conference.
Meanwhile, Loksha was forced into marriage twice despite being married with two kids before her abduction.
She gave birth in her first marriage in captivity to an jihadist Commander, Abu Omar who was reportedly killed in a gun fight with the military two years ago.