Kaduna house of horror

NEARLY 500 men and boys were on Thursday rescued from a building in the northern city of Kaduna, where the detainees were allegedly sexually abused and tortured, according to Nigerian police.

Children as young as five were among those in chains at what was thought to be an Islamic school. Kaduna police chief, Ali Janga told the BBC the building was raided after a tip-off about suspicious activity.

He described it as a “house of torture” and a place of human slavery.

Visible marks on their bodies showed that some had been tortured, police spokesman Yakubu Sabo in Kaduna State told The Associated Press, as shocked authorities tried to track down the families of what appeared to be some 400 victims.

“The condition under which we found the victims was so dehumanizing, many of them were chained,” Sabo said.

Eight suspects, most of them teachers, were arrested. The police chief said the detainees – some with injuries and starved of food – were overjoyed to be freed.

The detainees said they had been tortured, sexually abused, starved and prevented from leaving – in some cases for several years.

“I have spent three months here with chains on my legs,” Bell Hamza reportedly told Nigerian media.

“This is supposed to be an Islamic centre, but trying to run away from here attracts severe punishment; they tie people and hang them to the ceiling for that,”  he said.

Some of the children told police that their relatives had taken them there, believing the building to be a Koranic school.

Two of the children freed by police said their parents had sent them from Burkina Faso. Police believe the rest are mostly from northern Nigeria.

Islamic schools are popular in the region but there have long been allegations of abuse in some schools, and of pupils forced to beg for money on the streets.

One parent told Reuters news agency that they did not know their children would face “this kind of harsh condition”.

The captives are sheltering at a camp where their families are arriving to identify them. Hafsat Muhammad Baba of the Kaduna State government told the BBC the government will continue to provide medical care for the men and boys.

Police carried out the rescue on Thursday following a tip. It was not immediately clear what led to police being contacted, or how such a vast scope of alleged abuses managed to go unnoticed.

Local television footage showed most of the victims in very bad condition, with some walking with difficulty.

The building’s owner told police the children had been brought by their families to learn the Quran or because they had problems such as drug addiction. But police said the place was not licensed to run any reformatory or educational program.

The owner and six others who were said to be teachers have been arrested, the police spokesman said.

It is common to find boys begging on the streets in cities across northern Nigeria. They often are sent away by their families for Quranic training but then can be turned out into the streets by their new guardians to beg to earn their keep.

The newly discovered abuses, authorities said Friday, were another level entirely.

An aide to President Muhammadu Buhari, who comes from the north, earlier this year noted the widespread view that the “almajiri” learning system associated with begging was a “security challenge and a scar on the face of Northern Nigeria.”

But the aide, Garba Shehu, rejected reports that the president had banned the system, saying a ban would need to follow due process and consultation with relevant authorities.

“Indeed, the federal government wants a situation where every child of primary school age is in school rather than begging on the streets during school hours,” he said. “At the same time, we don’t want to create panic or a backlash.”