Borno’s Mothers of Courage: Amina’s Fight to Rebuild Life After the Darkness of Boko Haram
Hussaini Ibrahim 
Amina Isa Mohammed, a Borno mother and Boko Haram survivor, preparing dinner in her home in Almiskin community.
BORNO, Nigeria – Borno state once fondly called the Home of Peace — has endured a tragic rewrite of its identity. The rise of Boko Haram, a group rejecting Western education and enforcing extreme doctrines, thrust the state into a landscape of fear, scorched homes and fractured futures. For more than a decade, the insurgency reshaped the rhythm of daily life, turning schoolyards into ruins, villages into memories, and families into scattered fragments of loss. But even in the long, harsh shadow of conflict, stories of resilience persist — quiet, unadorned, courageous. Among them is the extraordinary journey of Amina Isa Mohammed, a 41-year-old mother from the Almiskin area of Jere Local Government Area. Her life, before and after the insurgency, stands as a testament to what survival truly means when the world collapses around you. Hussanni Ibrahim, writes.
‘They came with guns… everything was burning’
Amina was at home that morning when the first shots tore through the neighbourhood. The air filled with panic as insurgents stormed the community, firing sporadically and setting houses aflame.
“They came with guns, shouting and burning homes,” she recalled. “People ran in every direction. I carried my children and ran into the bush barefoot.”
They fled into the forest, moving from tree to tree, farmlands to narrow footpaths, always listening, always fearing discovery. For days, they hid with little food, little water, and no certainty that survival was ahead.
On the fifth day, Amina went into labour — far from clinics, midwives or the comfort of walls. With only her eldest daughter beside her, she delivered triplets on the forest floor. The newborns lived only a few hours.
“They died in my arms,” she said quietly. “I covered them with leaves and continued running. There was nowhere to stay.”
Her voice faltered, not from the memory alone, but from the weight of recounting it — the exhaustion, the fear, the heartbreak that fused into one unforgettable moment.
A return home, but to abandonment
When Amina finally reached the Bakassi IDP Camp, she was met not with comfort but another truth she had long learned to shoulder she was alone. Her husband, Adamu, had abandoned the family 11 years earlier. He did not return. He offered nothing, not even a word.
Even before Boko Haram’s violence, she described their marriage as a struggle lined with neglect and emotional abuse.
“I begged him many times for money for the children’s education, but he always insulted me,” she said. “Even before the insurgency, I was struggling alone.”
Her own education had stalled early. She completed secondary school with her husband promising she could continue afterwards. “The promise died after the wedding,” she said.
And so, her children became her dream — their schooling the only future she clung to amid crises.
But even that path held its own cruelty. At one point, while desperately trying to raise exam fees for her children, a man she approached demanded sex in exchange for financial help.
“I cried, but I had no choice,” she said softly. “The children needed to write their exams.”
Daily survival in Almiskin
Beyond emotional wounds, Amina battles the unrelenting demands of poverty. Food insecurity remains constant. During the rainy season, she and her children often survived on boiled wild leaves. “Some weeks we couldn’t cook anything proper,” she said.
Her home, once a makeshift shelter, only improved when her niece helped her build a small two-room structure. But heavy flooding swept through Almiskin, washing away her children’s school documents and the little food they stored. They took temporary refuge in a nearby public school, starting again from almost nothing.
Still, Amina pushes on — working odd jobs, stretching every grain, ensuring her children never lose the hope of education she was denied.
Zakariyya: A son shaped by conflict
Among her children, 20-year-old Zakariyya Adamu carries a maturity far beyond his age. A graduate of Maideribe Government Day Secondary School, he grew up watching his mother endure loss, hardship and unspoken grief.
“When I realised what she went through, I felt I had to help,” he said. “She suffered too much.”
He dreams of owning a Napep — a tricycle taxi — to support his mother and help fund the education of his younger siblings.
“She sacrificed everything,” he said. “I don’t want that to be in vain.”
Zakariyya’s childhood is marked by nights of fear: listening for gunshots, hearing screams from distant homes, watching neighbours disappear. Yet amid these memories, he holds firmly to hope.
“I just want us to live like normal people,” he said. “I want my mother to rest.”
The invisible wounds of Borno
Amina’s story echoes thousands of others scattered across Borno State. While the world counts death tolls and records destroyed settlements, the deeper wounds remain largely unseen.
Women, especially, have carried the heaviest burdens — from displacement and assault to abandonment and lifelong psychological trauma.
“Some women never came back,” Amina said. “Others returned with wounds — inside and outside.”
Children raised during the insurgency are equally marked. Many missed years of schooling, spent formative years in camps, or grew up knowing fear as their first language.
The crisis, human-rights groups warn, will take generations to heal.
A mother’s plea for a future
Today, Amina moves through life with a quiet determination. She wants the simplicity of peace — not as an idea, but as a lived reality. Stability for her family. A chance for her children to dream.
“I want peace. I want my children to go to school. I want them to know joy again,” she said.
Her tone is steady, carrying both exhaustion and strength. For her, survival means far more than escaping violence. It means rebuilding dignity from the fragments left behind, carrying on for the sake of her children, and holding onto a hope many might have abandoned.
“We are trying. We want life. We want peace,” she said — words that now echo across northern Nigeria as quietly powerful testimony to the resilience of mothers who have endured the unimaginable.
About the Author
Oluwatobi Adu 
Edino Chubiyo Cornelius 
Koko Maxwella 