United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative in Nigeria, Angele Dikongue-Atangana has said there are about 650,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), in the North East of Nigeria and that most of them live off the elements.
By Bob Majiri Oghene Etemiku
‘Hawa uuu, Hawa uuu’, a little boy said to me as I walked by the street of Bama, one morning. As I walked by him, I thought that I could give him a bath in my flat. His name was Umaru and he was an Almajiri.
His parents had allowed him to join other boys on the street every morning to learn under a holy man as was the custom in their form of Islamic religion.
Even if his father had been a rich man under the tenets of their religion, Umaru would still have been without food, a bath and would be dressed in rags.
His skin was ashen. He had long bony legs. His eyes were as sullen as cow milk. It is said that leaving him on the street like that toughens and prepares him for the challenges of becoming a man.
But I couldn’t give Umaru a bath that day – neighbours had gotten wind of what I was trying to do.
“They’ll burn your house if you bathe him – they will say you have made him forsake his religion”, someone said to me.
So, even though I let Umaru be, he seemed to have liked the name – Hawa uuu – that he had given to me and on any occasion when he sees me, his band of Almajiri lads would scream my name – Hawa uuu – corrupt version of ‘How are you?’
But it was not only Umaru who often called me Hawa uuu. Dimansi’s wife did as well. Mrs. Dimansi was my neighbor’s wife.
She was always in purdah – anytime there was any need in their home, she was not the one to go to the town market to buy it.
Mr. Dimansi did. He rode his bicycle to the market, where only old men and women and young boys sold the waters. The girls were kept at home, according to the custom.
“Come, come and see how it’s done,” she told me one day.
She knew I was eager to learn how she made the groundnut oil. But I was hesitant – if they would burn my house down for trying to bathe Umaru, would they clap for me if I sat down with a married woman to learn how to make groundnut oil?
But Mrs. Dimansi insisted. She urged me to sit by her, and when her husband chanced by he chuckled at the way I jumped up to make a run for it. Both husband and wife laughed at me.
“Relax, my husband’s not like that,” she assured.
So I poured the salt water in a bucket of groundnuts ground to paste. As she pressed the mixture against the sides of the bucket, a rich yellow substance flowed out.
“There’s the oil…the rest can be used for kulikuli,” she smiled at me.
That was ten years ago in Bama, a large town in Bornu State Nigeria’s North-East. But today, Umaru no longer roams the streets in search of a half-cooked discarded guinea pig egg to share with his friends.
On a good day after chanting his verses under the shade of a tree, he would have run off, his plate on his head in search for food.
One day as he and his friends were foraging for food in a nearby bin, a group of men dressed like soldiers rounded him up and drove him into the desert.
Nobody heard of him again until much later with that group of men. He was holding an AK-47. He had grown a little but still had that ashen look. He shot at oncoming vehicles, shouting in Arabic.
After the dust and smoke from Umaru’s raid cleared, the Dimansi family picked up whatever they could and fled Bama to live with their uncle in Nassarawa.
Others are not as lucky as Mrs. Dimansi. They no longer have homes or buckets of groundnut oil nor children dressed in rags roaming the streets in search of breakfast.
A band of terrorists who said that they were fighting against western education often attacked towns and villages – they killed all the men, abducted the women and young girls and burnt all the houses. Boys like Umaru were kidnapped and trained to shoot and burn people and houses.
Violence leading to loss of homes and income in Nigeria is not peculiar to Bama in Borno State. A one-page report on a survey on pre-election violence by Africa Network for Environment & Economic Justice released by the Monitoring and Evaluation department stated that political and religious violence is common in places like Lagos, Katsina, Plateau, Rivers, Bauchi.
The characters involved in the fray use weapons like locally made pistols, machetes and improvised Explosive devices. Even though homes are razed to the ground and property often lost, very few arrests are made.
Sources from the UN office for the coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (UNOCHA) claim that 300,000 people in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, 70% of them women and children have fled their homes since early 2013.
For example thousands of residents of Baga in Borno state, northeastern Nigeria, remained displaced for fear of further clashes breaking out between radical Islamist groups (Boko Haram).
An estimated of 2,275 homes were destroyed by fires and a further 125 severely damaged, according to satellite images released by Human Right Watch (HRW, 2013).
Apart from private homes, since 2010, dozens of schools have been torched and unknown scores of students killed among more than 1,600 victims slain by Boko Haram.
According to Global Review Update, in a 2014 Report, Nigeria has 3.3 million persons who have lost their homes.
The report said that in 2013 alone, nearly 5000, 000 men, women and children lost their homes in the North Eastern states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa.
On a global scale Nigeria is only ranked behind Syria with 6.5million and Colombia with 5.7million people who have lost their homes to internal conflict.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative in Nigeria, Angele Dikongue-Atangana has said that about 650,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), in the North East of Nigeria and that most of them live off the elements.
As at January 21, 2014, the Director-General of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Muhammad Sani-Sidi said there were currently 981,416 internally displaced persons in the country.
Out of the figure, 107,997 were living in IDPs established camps, while 804,732 live with host communities and relatives.
About 66,087 of the IDPs were reportedly displaced by natural disasters while 915,329 were affected by the activities of the terror group, Boko Haram in the North East of Nigeria.
Concerning the IDPs in the different states in the North East, National Emergency Management Agency, the body responsible for disaster management in Nigeria has disclosed that there are more than a million, in ten IDP camps in Borno state alone, 14 IDP camp in Adamawa state and one IDP camp in Gombe state.
In Yobe, IDPs prefer to stay with families in host communities while in Bauchi, there are 13 communities accommodating people displaced by insurgency.
The IDPs are women, girls and minors. Men are few. They are prime targets for death. The United Nations Human Rights Council, UNHRC puts the figures at IDP camps at 258,252 babies and minors, 207,583 women, and 147,894 men who live in camps without health care, clean water and decent food.
The Draft National Policy on the internally displaced persons in Nigeria seeks to guarantee the rights of women, children, PLWA, the elderly and persons living with disability to protection from displacement, and return, resettlement and re-integration into the communities they once lived in and called their home. That has been a far cry.
Bob MajiriOghene Etemiku is Communications Manager with Africa Network for Environment & Economic Justice (ANEEJ). majirioghene@yahoo.com, 08096651570.
Additional reports for this news/features article were provided by ANEEJ staff, Sandra Eguagie, programs Assistant, and Charles Iyare, Monitoring and Evaluation Unit, ANEEJ, Benin City, Nigeria.
