- Victim spent four years in terrorist camp
- Christians pressured to accept Islam or face slavery
- Victim escaped on fifth attempt with help from Fulani woman
An escaped Boko Haram victim, Fayina Akilawus, has given a harrowing account of forced religious conversion and slavery inside the terrorist group’s camp, revealing how Christian captives were punished for refusing to renounce their faith.
Speaking during an interview on Arise News, Fayina said Boko Haram fighters repeatedly pressured her and other Christian captives to convert to Islam. Those who refused, she said, were declared slaves under the group’s brutal rules.
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“They told us clearly that if we refused to convert, we would become slaves,” she said. “We said no. We chose to remain Christians.”
According to Fayina, she spent four years in the camp, where non-Muslim captives were forced to carry firewood, fetch water, cook, and perform household chores for militants and their families.
She explained that Boko Haram members regularly preached to them, presenting conversion as a path to a “better life.” When the captives continued to resist, they were separated and assigned to different commanders’ homes as domestic slaves.
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“After nine months of refusing, they began separating us,” Fayina recalled. “Each person was sent to serve in different houses.”
Her first escape attempt came on the very night she arrived at the camp. She and another woman walked through the night but were recaptured after unknowingly walking into a settlement linked to the terrorists.
“They beat us all the way back. They beat the hell out of us,” she said.
Fayina said her eventual escape succeeded on her fifth attempt, thanks to a Fulani woman who sold kunu and nunu near the camp. Though the woman initially feared for her life, she later agreed to help.
“With God, all things are possible,” Fayina said. “We prayed, and God had mercy on us.”
Boko Haram has operated in northern Nigeria for over a decade, killing thousands and displacing millions, with women and children often bearing the worst of its violence.
