In Nigeria, the path to autonomy for women victims of Boko Haram

Despite the early hour, practical activities are going well at the Agency for Mass Education (AME) center in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State in northeastern Nigeria. Young girls in long, colorful veils lean over a table covered with prototype handbags made from paper and staples. A little further on, a boy carefully passes the blade of his razor over the head of one of his comrades, under the watchful eye of about fifteen other apprentice barbers. The instructions of their teachers are covered from time to time by the sound of a saw coming from the carpentry workshop installed under a nearby awning.

These vocational trainings, developed by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in collaboration with the government of Borno State, aim to improve the resilience of local communities by offering basic skills in different fields: jewellery, carpentry, animal husbandry, soap making, shoemaking… “The training cycles last three months and at the end we pay a small compensation of N9,000 [près de 19 euros] to our beneficiaries, details Zaynab Moussa, who works for the AME.

The initiative, launched in early 2020, aims to train 25,000 young people affected by the conflict in three years, whether they are members of host communities or part of the more than one million people who have fled their land to escape the abuses of Boko Haram. In Maiduguri, this initiative funded by the European Union (EU) has already proven its effectiveness for some former graduates, who have been able to start a small business or help their relatives access education in a region where 1,400 schools have been destroyed and 2,295 teachers killed since 2009.

Closure of IDP camps

Salma Yunus, 18, learned how to make soap and cleaning products in this program. With the small savings received at the end of her internship, she was able to buy the products necessary to launch her activity. “I managed to make a margin of 500 naira every time I sold a liter of washing up liquid for 1,000 naira [environ 2 euros] », explains the young woman. Her application and good knowledge of safety measures in the handling of chemicals also allowed her to return to the program as a trainer.

With these revenues, Salma Yunus hopes to gain independence. Her situation is all the more precarious as the Teacher’s Village camp, where she lived with 18,000 other internally displaced people, was closed by the authorities in mid-January. The Governor of Borno State has indeed pledged to empty all the camps for displaced people around Maiduguri in order to encourage the resumption of agricultural activities in the region. A decision widely denounced by NGOs, who fear that these populations are victims of hunger and insecurity. If the secondary towns of Borno State are protected by the Nigerian army, the Islamic State group in West Africa (Iswap, resulting from a split from the Boko Haram movement in 2016) levies taxes and still controls many rural areas.

Among the approximately 200,000 displaced people living in the Maiduguri camps, many have nowhere to go. This is the case of Salma Yunus, who lost both her parents, killed by Boko Haram men in the Baga region, in 2014 – an episode that she still has a hard time talking about.

Fatima Ali, too, refuses to leave Maiduguri and lose the seamstress job she now does. At the end of her training, this 20-year-old woman was recruited to make some 27,000 school uniforms which will be distributed in schools in the region by UNICEF. Thanks to her income of 30,000 naira per term, she was able to finance the education of her little brothers, who are now enrolled in primary school. “I learned a lot of things here, to cut fabric, to sew it… I can buy food and even clothes, that’s more than enough for me! », she assures.

“They beat me and almost raped me”

Fatima Ali measures her luck by the yardstick of the ordeals she has passed through. The young woman is a survivor of the Gamboru-Ngala massacre, two twin cities destroyed by Boko Haram in 2014. More than 300 people were massacred by the jihadists during an assault that lasted nearly twelve hours. Fatima was taken with other young girls to be given in marriage to jihadist fighters. “I refused, so they beat me and almost raped me,” she explains in a soft voice. The one who was then only a teenager finally managed to escape after two months of captivity.

After having found refuge for a while in a Cameroonian village, she had to flee again, to once again escape the attacks led by Boko Haram on this side of the border. After a journey of several weeks through northeastern Nigeria, she was finally repatriated to Maiduguri, like tens of thousands of other people fleeing the conflict. “I went around the camps in the city, until I finally found my mother”, she recalls. Six years later, Fatima would dream of opening her own sewing workshop. ” But at the moment I haven’t raised enough money to buy my own sewing machine yet., she regrets. Normally it costs 50,000 naira, but lately the prices have increased a lot. »

In principle, the basic products used during these professional trainings are inexpensive and easy to find on the local market. But young graduates often lack the necessary capital to start their professional activity. Asenath Edmond is well aware of the challenges ahead, but after two weeks of training, she is already savoring her first victory: that of having defied gender norms by being one of the few women trained to become a house painter. “My mother died and I live with my four brothers and my father”, says the 22-year-old trainee, who was born and raised in Maiduguri, in a cheerful voice. “When I told them what I was doing, they laughed in my face, but I know that if a man can do it, I can do it too! », she says bravely. At the end of her training, Asenath hopes to be able to save enough to continue her studies, hoping one day to become a nurse.