ICC Note: Many children in Nigeria end up becoming victims of the jihadists like Boko Haram. Christian children especially are victims of abuse because they are forced to convert to Islam and often times to kill their own families. They are usually the most vulnerable in a society that has no respect for their lives and their religious freedom.
1/31/2017, Nigeria (Reuters) – Running his fingers over the wide scars on his knee and thigh, 13-year-old Usman recalled the moment he thought he would die.
The boy was fleeing a Boko Haram attack on his village in northeast Nigeria with his mother last year when two militants knocked him to the ground, and approached him wielding knives.
“I was scared that I would die … that I would never see my mother again,” said Usman, explaining how he limped to a nearby camp for the displaced in Bama town in Borno state, the heart of the jihadists’ brutal seven-year bid to create an Islamic state.
For two months, Usman heard nothing about his mother until two aid workers brought good news. They had tracked her down to her brother’s house in the nearby city of Maiduguri.
“We cried when we saw each other, there was so much joy,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, sitting next to his beaming mother, Biba, in the cramped, dusty yard of his uncle’s home.
 
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