A scenario worthy of a Hollywood film. A nurse from Unicef abducted six years ago by jihadists in northeastern Nigeria, and twice forced to marry fighters, has regained her freedom after escaping, the Nigerian army announced on Friday.

Alice Loksha was kidnapped by the jihadist group Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP) with two Nigerian midwives working for the group. International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on March 1, 2018 in an attack targeting the town of Rann (far northeast), where three other aid workers and eight Nigerian soldiers had been killed.

The two ICRC employees, Hauwa Liman and Saifura Khorsa, had been executed after a few months in detention. “She was forced to marry a terrorist leader named Abu Umar, with whom she had a son.”General Kenneth Chigbu explained at a press briefing in the northeastern city of Maiduguri late on Friday.

“Her husband remarried after her kidnapping”

After Abu Umar’s death in 2022, Alice Loksha was forced to marry another ISWAP commander. She managed to escape on October 24 and joined army soldiers five days later, said General Kenneth Chigbu. A United Nations source in the region told AFP that they were trying to resolve the “complications” around Alice Loksha, who was already married and had two children before her abduction.

“We have a delicate situation on our hands because her husband remarried after her abduction, thinking she was already dead, and now here she is with another man’s child.”said the source, adding that she was worried about the stigma Alice Loksha and her son would suffer if she “eventually returned to her family, who could hardly welcome the child into their midst.”.

“Bring back our girls”

Mass kidnappings, particularly of young girls, began with the rise of Boko Haram in Nigeria some fifteen years ago. The conflict has left 40,000 people dead and two million displaced, according to the United Nations. In 2014, the jihadist group abducted 276 female students from Chibokin the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, provoking international outrage and mobilization. “Bring back our girls. Around a hundred of them are still missing.

Boko HaramISWAP and heavily armed criminal gangs, known locally as bandits, still regularly kidnap people in northeastern Nigeria, as well as in northwestern and central states.

According to experts, the current economic crisis in the continent’s most populous country – the worst in thirty years – has boosted the number of kidnappings. In January, the Nigerian consulting firm SBM reported that 4777 kidnappings had been recorded since the president came to power. Bola Ahmed Tinubu in May 2023. But figures on the subject remain unreliable, as not all cases are reported.