Zainab’s challenge is one out of many instances of Nigerian children who have got their lives affected by violence.
Giving legal consent to both the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, Nigeria adopted the Child’s Rights Act in 2003. The Act is expected to protect children against all forms of attack and inhumane treatment.
This was, however, not the case as Islamic movement members claimed that almost 200 children were killed during the Zaria massacre. Those who survived death were not out of danger either.
Though an eight-year-old girl when the massacre occurred, Nargis Abdullahi said she was abused by the soldiers. She still battles with the trauma many years later.
“Seeing people being killed in my presence was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I saw no fewer than 10 people losing their lives before me and by the evening of Saturday, Dec. 12, children and women were separated from men.
“I was brutalised alongside many other children of my age bracket. By Sunday afternoon, a soldier asked me where my mother was. Before I could respond, he slapped my face with his two hands and I became deaf for hours,” she recalled.
She was later arrested and driven to the military barracks where she saw hundreds of women including her mother tied with rope and paraded as ‘terrorists’.
“Seeing my mother molested made me really sad. There were over 300 women and children arrested. The soldiers threatened to kill us when they were taking us to the Police Criminal Investigative Department in Kaduna but we begged them,” Nargis narrated with unsettling emotions.
The teenager’s eyes were wet with tears as she explained the inhumane treatment they were subjected to while in police custody for five days. “It was a cold period. I was sleeping in my mother’s hijab. The police subjected us to emotional torture and asked us to denounce our allegiance to the Islamic movement.”
Many years after the bloody incident, Nargis battles trauma as a result of witnessing long hours of gunshots. “I feel a great wrench of sadness anytime I remember the injustice against my people and I don’t think the authorities are ready to dispense justice.”
Copyright of some part: HumanAngle.org
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