“Bring Me My Daughter”: A Christian Widow’s Struggle to Reclaim Her 17-Year-Old After Alleged Forced Conversion in Bauchi

By our Correspondent

At 10 a.m. on Thursday, August 27, in Bauchi, she sat with her lawyer in the office of the Deputy Commissioner of Police, a brown file of court papers on her lap. By 6 p.m., she walked out the same way she came in. Alone, her daughter was not with her.

For eight weeks now, this Christian widow has lived on buses shuttling between Jos, where she is doing her national youth service (NYSC) and Bauchi, Police stations, the Sharia Commission, court corridors and waiting rooms. She carries the same file everywhere. It contains what she says is a court order to release her 17-year-old daughter. The order has not brought her daughter home.

Being her first child. The girl’s father died when she was three, and since then it has been just the three of them: mother, the girl and her sibling, in their home in Bauchi. The mother paid school fees piece by piece, hoping to see her daughter finish, go to university, start a life.

“After all the suffering,” she says quietly, “I wanted to see her achieve her goals.”

It was while the girl was writing her exams that she never came back. Two days later, the phone calls started. “We heard she had converted to Islam and her name was changed,” the mother says.

She rushed to Bauchi and, for a brief moment, held her daughter again. She took her back to Jos, where the mother is doing her youth service. Five days later, the girl was gone. The family later pieced it together. The mother went to the police.

On a recorded call played over the loudspeaker at the station, Sadik allegedly admitted that the girl was with him. He was arrested. He told police he had taken her to Kaduna, then brought her back. That should have been the end of it. Instead, it was the beginning of a maze.

Authorities did not hand the girl to her mother. They allegedly took her to the Bauchi Sharia Commission. From there, the Gender Unit of the Criminal Investigation Department moved her to a state-run orphanage “to let her mind settle,” the mother was told.

The lawyer got a court order for her release. The mother thought that was it. It wasn’t. “Police said the order was wrong. It should have been addressed to them because they took her to the orphanage,” she allegedly recounted.

Then came another obstacle: “We were told the Sharia Commission wrote to the court asking them not to issue another order.”

The Federal High Court in Jos sat twice over the matter, then the courts went on vacation.

Last week she tried again. The mother of the girl and her lawyer met the Commissioner of Police in Bauchi. He gave a direct order: release the girl.

The Deputy Commissioner repeated it to the Officer in Charge of Gender. The mother waited. The officer did not go to the orphanage. He allegedly wrote to the Ministry of Health instead. The letter was rejected. “What does an orphanage have to do with the Ministry of Health?” she asks, her voice tired.

“The Commissioner gave an order. The court gave an order. But nothing happened.”

Officials say the girl alleged that she was asked to stay until she is 18. The mother, however, says she does not believe it. “She told me she wanted to come back,” she says. “They are the ones who do not want to allow her.”

In Nigeria, the Child Rights Act says 18 is the age of maturity. But in 12 northern states, Sharia courts run alongside statutory courts. Custody, marriage, religion these cases slip between them.

A human rights lawyer who asked not to be named because the case is ongoing puts it plainly: “Without enforcement, a court order is just paper. And when a child is involved, every day of delay is a day of harm.”

Her fear is not political. It is simple and maternal. “Her safety and where she is staying,” she says. She is raising two children alone. Her daughter is the first. She does not want speeches. She wants her daughter. “I am still alive, and I can take care of my daughter,” she says.

Christian advocacy groups have documented similar cases in northern Nigeria over the last decade: teenage girls, relationships, conversion, and families left running from one office to another. The endings are different each time. Sometimes there is media attention. Sometimes there is pressure. Sometimes there is silence.

For now, the girl is still in state custody. Her mother is still travelling. Still waiting. “Like my daughter’s name is,” she says. “I am holding on to God.”

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