By Musdapha Ilo, Maiduguri

More than a year after Boko Haram fighters launched a massive attack and took over Bama, Borno State and six months after it was reclaimed by Nigerian soldiers, corpses of 81 people killed by the insurgents have been exhumed and reburied in the community.

Boko Haram took over Bama in September, last year and held sway, administering the town according to strict Sharia code, until May, 2015 when Nigerian troops drove out the insurgents and reclaimed it.

However, as they fled, the insurgents killed many people, including their own wives, apparently to prevent the possibilities of unbelievers marrying them.

Many corpses were dumped in wells and inside the Yadzaram River.

However, after all this time, the chairman of Bama local government area, Ali Gujja, told journalists on Wednesday that a total of 81 corpses have been exhumed and buried at cemetery in the town according Islamic rights.

He explained that remains which were mainly skeletons were exhumed last week and buried on Thursday by officials of Bama local government.

The council boss said the remains were exhumed mostly along the river beds by volunteers and some members of the Civilian Joint Task Force, CJTF, and that they could not be retrieved before now because of frequent insurgency attacks in the area.

Gujja lamented that as the insurgents escaped they dumped bodies of residents they had killed in some wells in the town, adding that the affected wells had been sealed off and fumigated to prevent any outbreak of water borne diseases.