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EXCLUSIVE: 'Please Hear Our Cry For Mercy' — Nurse, Midwives Abducted By Boko Haram Write Buhari

“Our dear childrens, husbands, relations and the entire nation need us back home. To our able organisations please hear our cry for mercy. We are really helpless and hopeless, please rescue us and vindicate us, our families need us back and the entire nation at large," they said in a handwritten note deliberately unedited by SaharaReporters, which was passed on through a secondary source to Ahmad Salkida, the Nigerian journalist with the deepest knowledge of Boko Haram and the insurgency.

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The nurse and two midwives abducted by Boko Haram on March 1, 2018, have sent a plea for mercy to President Muhammadu Buharu and Kashim Shettima, Governor of Borno State.

The three health workers — Mrs. Alice Loksha Ngaddah, a nurse and mother of two; Hauwa Mohammed Liman (midwife) and Saifura Husseini Ahmed (midwife) — said they are “really helpless and hopeless” in captivity and would like to regain their freedom, as they are needed back home by their families.

Ngaddah was working for UNICEF, while the midwives were contract staff of the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC

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“With heartfelt gratitude, we wish to extent out warm greetings to our dear families, relations and the entire people of our nation.  We are the Nurse/Midwives that was captured by Junudul Khalifa under Abu Musab Albarnawi,” they said in a handwritten note deliberately unedited by SaharaReporters, which was passed on through a secondary source to Ahmad Salkida, the Nigerian journalist with the deepest knowledge of Boko Haram and the insurgency.

Salkida confirmed to SaharaReporters that the note was first delivered to him last week, but he turned it down because it bore no signature.

“However, yesterday, it was resent with signatures on the note; and so far, one signature and the handwriting have been verified by friends and family of the two captives,” the journalist added.

The captives said they were “working under International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC)/ United Nation Children Education Fund (UNICEF) when they were “captured on Thursday, 1st of March, 2018 in Kala-Balge (Rann) Local Government of Borno State, Nigeria”.

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“We are pleading and begging with heavy hearts to our Humble president Muhammadu Buhari to hear our cry for mercy and look into our situation and vindicate us from this captivity,” they said in the note.

“Our dear childrens, husbands, relations and the entire nation need us back home.  To our able organisations please hear our cry for mercy. We are really helpless and hopeless, please rescue us and vindicate us, our families need us back and the entire nation at large. 

“To our Excellency Governor Kashima Shettima, the local Government Councils and the entire people of our dear nations to hear our cry and help us in anyway and get us out here so that we can be reunite with our families.”

The trio were abducted by insurgents of the al-Barnawi-controlled Islamic State West African Province (SWAP) — which, though a breakaway faction of Boko Haram, hates to be linked to Boko Haram — in an attack on a heavily-guarded military facility in the small town of Rann, Borno State. The insurgents killed a yet unknown number of soldiers and international aid workers.

As reported by Salkida last week, Ngaddah’s aged mother died unexpectedly in April as a result of the trauma of her daughter’s abduction. 

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Insurgency