Babagana Abacha’s sister had just died that November morning in 2024, in nearby Ajiri Mafa. He was saddened by the loss and deep in mourning. It was important that he pay his last respects and, if possible, do her one final honour by lowering her into her grave. But then there was his farm and the question of what would become of his produce if he didn’t go that day to cultivate it. He had been tending the land for a long time, and if he didn’t harvest the beans, they could spoil.

Babagana was an internally displaced person in the Mafa Garage IDP Camp in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria. The Boko Haram insurgency, which broke out over a decade ago and has since displaced more than three million people, had not spared him. As he and his family struggled to survive in the absence of humanitarian aid, he couldn’t afford to risk losing what little they had, especially not the farm produce they relied on.

In the end, he made the painful decision not to attend his sister’s burial, asking his wife, Fanna, to travel to Ajiri Mafa to represent him instead. They left the house around the same time, each heading in a different direction.

When Fanna returned to Mafa later that day, around 3 p.m., she ran into some women she knew. They approached her with quiet curiosity, scanning her expression for signs. Then, one of them asked if she hadn’t heard the tragedy. Confused, she asked what they meant. Her husband, they said, had been abducted by Boko Haram militants on his farm that morning. The abductors had already reached out to demand a ransom.

Fanna was stunned. It had to be a cruel prank, or maybe an unverified rumour. She rushed home, hoping for reassurance, hoping to disprove the whispers. But her neighbours and children confirmed the same story the women had told her on the road.

“I asked them how they knew: how did the terrorists reach out to us about the ransom?”

They told her the call had come through her own phone. That was when she knew it was real.

Her husband’s phone had broken a few months earlier, and she had loaned him hers to use in the meantime. He had it with him when he was taken. The terrorists had used the phone to contact the family, calling one of his friends. Fanna was instantly plunged into anguish.

The abduction of displaced persons had become a grim reality, not just in their camp, but across many others in Borno State. Still, it had never come this close. A month before the incident, terrorists had snuck right into the camp and abducted Yasin Dogo, a 25-year-old IDP. In March this year, there were several such abductions in other camps, leading to crowdfunding attempts for ransom. Terror groups have relied, in recent years, on abductions as a major funding stream. ISWAP, in particular, is estimated to have raked in at least ₦1 billion in ransom alone between last year and now.

Before Fanna and her children slept that night, the captors called again.

“I spent that entire night in pure agony, wondering what would happen, what would not happen. They demanded millions of naira, but we told them we could not afford it. We negotiated until they agreed to take ₦250,000.”

The following morning, Fanna sold off almost everything they had in the camp and, even then, only raised ₦100,000. The challenge of raising the rest of the money at first seemed insurmountable, but neighbours and friends started to spread the word to crowdfund the rest of the money, a common desperate resort by Nigerians in both rural and urban areas. For two days, friends went round the camp begging for money until they were able to raise the rest of the ransom. HumAngle spoke to one of Babagana’s friends who spearheaded the fundraising drive.

“I held a carton and went door to door myself begging for money,” he said. “Especially in the mosque after prayers. I begged alongside other people…”

When the money was finally complete, the terrorists shifted the goalpost and asked for additional items. They wanted three smartphones, they said.

“…They specified the kind of phones they wanted and even told us how much they cost,” the friend said. “They cost about ₦24,000 each. We then handed everything over to his wife to add to the money she had been able to raise on her own.”

The question then emerged as to who would deliver the ransom payment. 

Women are increasingly forced to step up to deliver ransom money in locations like that for a number of reasons: men believe they are more likely to be killed or held back. And the insurgents also believe women are less likely to collude with security forces to ambush them.

The duty fell on Fanna to deliver the ransom. 

They have been married for over 25 years and have overcome a lot in that time. Together, they fled their hometown of Katakara nine years ago, forced into displacement. Together, they buried two children—an unspeakable grief that never truly went away. And when, finally, their children began to survive infancy, they shared the quiet joy of each milestone. Once, many years ago, before the children came, they were all each other had. In some ways, they still are.

Even now, Fanna speaks of her husband like someone who knows the value of a lifeline.

“You see, I do not have anyone in the world. My parents are dead, and so are my siblings. Aside from my seven children, my husband is all I have in the world. And if something happened to him, I don’t know how I would have survived and also cared for these children,” she told me.

Each time the terrorists called to negotiate ransom, they would beat her husband throughout the call. He screamed as they whipped him, anguish bleeding through the phone line for his family to hear. It was a tactic designed to wound, to hasten, to coerce. And it worked.

So when the time came to deliver the ransom, daunting as it was, Fanna did not hesitate. She and two other women, each tethered to a missing loved one, took up the terrifying task. The terrorists gave them vague directions to a forest, promising to meet them, take the ransom, and free the captives. Things went differently.

“They would phone us and tell us to go to one area, and we would not see anyone there. They would then redirect us to another spot, and there would be no one there. They did this for many hours. It was not until around 5 p.m. that day that they finally gave us the right directions.”

When they finally arrived, armed men loomed in the trees like shadows, watching. On a mat nearby, the captives—her husband among them—sat silently, encircled. And when Fanna saw him, alive and breathing, a wave of relief swept through her.

“I was so relieved when I saw that he was alive.”

The men took her money and counted it. From the other women, they snatched the bundles impatiently, skipping the count.

“They seemed to want the transaction over as soon as possible. They were worried that we might have come with security forces.”

But that was never an option, Fanna says. Not in a terrain where life hangs by a thread. If they had come with soldiers, the terrorists, perched high in the trees and alert, would have spotted them long before contact, she believes. They might have opened fire. They might have also killed the captives in retaliation. Fanna knew there was no version of the story that would end without more pain.

And so, after the exchange, her husband, alongside the others, was released. But their ordeal was far from over.

“It was nightfall, and we had to trek for hours to reach our destination.”

The route back was haunted by the fear of running into soldiers, especially with the curfew. Thankfully, members of the civilian joint task force had informed security forces of their late return.

“They told us to keep walking even if we heard gunshots. They said we would be safe, nothing would happen.”

A fractured freedom

What came back with them from the forest was not whole. Babagana has not spoken much about what happened.

“He only spoke about how they would whip him whenever they were on the phone with us,” Fanna says, her eyes glassy with tears she refused to let fall.

Even when HumAngle requested to speak with him, he declined. 

“He does not go to the farm anymore. He does not go too far from the camp. He only goes to the market occasionally. He is scarred by the experience…Thinking of all this is painful and heartwrenching, but if we do not endure, what can we do?”

Fanna is emotionally wounded and continues to hope for an end to it all. Not just his trauma, but the enduring insecurity that has so violently changed all their lives.