Mini-concentration

In the name of piety, parents and sectarian leaders could turn human society into a hell. They did quite that in the three so-called Islamic corrective centres so far unearthed in Kaduna and Katsina states in less than a month.

The latest was in Kaduna and the state governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, personally led the raid to set free 147 inmates. In the third one, the victims were shackled as though they had committed great crimes or felony worthy of official execution.

But the criminals were those who did this. This includes the so-called clerics who served as guardians, and the relations of the victims who gave over their children and relatives to the centres. They were mini-concentration camps. In the first one in Kaduna, they camped about 400 men and boys, many of whom, precisely 77, were under 18 years of age. They even chained down a five-year-old.

“They used engine belts and electrical cables to flog us,” remarked a 15-year-old boy, who added that the so-called teachers sodomised them. “Teachers used to sexually harass us…They tried to loosen my pants once but I fought them off and was beaten.”

Who is Imam Ahmad Bin Hanbal? The centre was named after him. Who are the parents and guardians paying fees to admit their children to such house of horror? They were served twice a day, at 10 am and 11 pm.

“They beat us everywhere in the house, even in the mosque. If you asked to speak with your family, they would shackle you. On the bodies of some of the inmates were sores, scabs and scars. Reports have it that some of the teachers have been arrested.

A young man who claimed to have had a doctorate degree said that he did not know how he got there. He said his relatives saw that he had married a Christian and his children were in the danger of being Christians. He underwent torture himself.

The Katsina story is similar. They had all-male camp, masquerading as an Islamic school housing about 300 persons. They escaped because of the draconian treatment superintended by a 78-year-old Muslim cleric. But the police were able to track 67 boys between ages seven and 40 bound in chains in the school in Daura.

The third one that the state governor raided was co-educational and the girls said they were subjected to sexual predation.  The owner, one Malam Ismaila Abubakar,  and seven of his teachers were arrested.

The three so-called correctional centres were neither registered nor even recognised by the authorities. But the horror was that the centres were known all over the north, and persons brought there from far and near. If a five-year-old could be held captive for years, what sort of correction can such a child benefit from such brutalisation?

The parents brought their unruly children for discipline, and sometimes when they were set free by the owners, the parents returned them to the centres. It is cheery news that they were caught. The painful thing, though, is that they were allowed to thrive for years, and innocent citizens to suffer such immense dehumanisation.

It is this sort of pious perversion that gave birth to extreme groups in the north like Boko Haram. We may recall that the Islamic sect in the northeast began in the same fashion, although by some cynical benevolence. The boys coalesced into lethal force that has crippled Borno State and spread its fangs to its neighbours for years.

We need to comb the north because we might still have such abysmal perversions of correctional centres across the region, and the sooner we discover and destroy them, the safer we are as a people.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe to our Newsletter

* indicates required

Intuit Mailchimp