‘IDP camps as our new home’

Years after escaping death in the hands of Boko Haram insurgents into makeshift camps, displaced persons now call their tents home.

Hamman Julde fled his village in Gwoza Local Government Area of Borno State in 2014 to escape Boko Haram’s attacks. The terrorist group had set out to capture Nigeria’s territories in the North-East states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe and to bring them under the control of its declared caliphate.

Gwoza was one town that had witnessed a series of raids by Boko Haram fighters before it eventually fell into their hands in 2014 when they declared it the capital of their new caliphate.

Julde was one of the lucky residents who managed to escape the terror that other residents of the town would be subjected to under Abubakar Shekau’s rule.

Thinking he would be back home in less than a year, Julde moved into an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in Abuja. But five years on, he still sleeps on mats in a shelter made with tarpaulin, with his wife and five children, a place they now consider home at the Durumi camp in Garki, Abuja.

“When I got to Abuja I gladly slept on the floor because there was peace and I thought I would not stay here for too long before I returned home, but things aren’t looking that way now,” he said.

He lives on donations from non-governmental organisations and philanthropists. However, the gifts, food, clothing and other charity given to them are not enough to carter for his family. He now rides a rickety motorcycle, which he got from someone.

Hamman’s time frame of returning home depended on the success of the Nigerian government to defeat the insurgents in the North-East.

A year after Julde’s hometown was captured, the Nigerian security forces managed to recapture the town and reclaim other territories controlled by the group. But Boko Haram has continued to carry out isolated attacks on civilian and military targets in the North-East, sending fears into the minds of IDPs who want to return home.

Ten years into the insurgency, thousands of IDPs like Julde, who took refuge in one of the shanties in Abuja, now call it home.

Many of the displaced persons now drive taxis, ride commercial motorcycles, tricycles, work on construction sites and other places to fend for their families while in the camp.

“We want to go back to our homes, but the place is not peaceful, so for now, we consider here to be home,” he said.

In Yimitu, a community few kilometres from Abuja’s highbrow Apo quarters, another set of IDPs from Borno reside in rented apartments while others stay in uncompleted buildings. In Wassa, another part of the capital city, the IDPs cultivate farmlands and engage in menial jobs to fend for their families.

The situation is similar in Borno State, where most of the displaced persons are sheltered at the Dalori camp in Maiduguri. Thousands of IDPs consider here and other camps in Maiduguri as home.

“The moment government and security agencies assure us of adequate security in our respective communities, not local government headquarters, you will see us all bidding farewell to Maiduguri camps. Until then, here is home,” said an IDP at Dalori camp in Maiduguri.

Stirring a pot of tomato paste at Africa’s once-acclaimed largest IDP camp, preparatory to the evening business, Kyallu Shata exuded a striking contrast between an IDP and a thriving circumstantial restaurant operator.

Kyallu, a mother of five, has been living at Dalori 1 camp at the outskirts of Maiduguri since 2014 when her village, Ashigashiya, in Gwoza Local Government Area of Borno State, right at the Nigeria-Cameroon border, was ruined by Boko Haram.

With her husband still missing since the attack, Kyallu now operates an improvised open-space restaurant to earn some cash to augment the little handout of food she gets from food-mandate, INGOs.

Kyallu is one of the hundreds of thousands of IDPs who, for numerous reasons, will not vacate Maiduguri camps for their home communities, or camps opened by government in their home local government headquarters on the arrangement of gradual return, rehabilitation and resettlement to their home communities as security is reportedly restored across the terror-troubled terrain.

“Most of us from Gwoza villages in all camps in Maiduguri still won’t go back to Gwoza because we will have little or nothing to do there, as our villages have not been reconstructed and there is virtually no promise of any security there, even if we are allowed to go back and rebuild our homes,” Kyallu said.

Kyallu runs three sessions of her open-space restaurant at Dalori 1 camp where she sells tuwo-semovita, rice, yam and beans porridge, and soya bean cake to IDPs, to enable her buy condiments for the food rations she receives as charity.

“I have not gone back home because Banki itself is now camp for hundreds of thousands of people chased out of their villages in Bama Local Government Area and those along the Cameroonian border,” Kaigama Adam,  an IDP from the border town of Banki, said.

“Our homes are now camps for a massive population of IDPs from Kumshe, Gulumba, Darajamal, Kote, Bomani and over a hundred of villages and hamlets around and along the border,” he added.

Kaigama uses his skills as a carpenter to make frames and do minor repairs on IDPs’ shelters in the camp to earn a living for himself.

He narrates that the reconstruction of Banki has still not been completed as they await the completion and subsequent evacuation of other IDPs out of their homes to enable them go back and rebuild their lives. “Until then, we are at home at Dalori camp,” he stressed.

Kaigama, however, said their main problem was not the security in their villages per say, but homes they would be returning to.

Abbagana Ibrahim, a farmer and one of the elders at Dalori camp, who hails from Bama, explained that most of them decided to remain in Maiduguri camps because they have no habitable houses to return to, and they will go to Bama and be kept in the camp, virtually doing nothing for a living when they are already doing some lucrative trades in Maiduguri.

Abbagana, who has a wife and 10 children said, “We’ll have nothing to do in terms of earning no matter how little in an environment, mainly populated by your fellow IDPs who are also struggling for that little thing with you. As a farmer, you cannot go farther than a kilometre at the outskirts to avoid being killed by Boko Haram.”

Mustapha Ibrahim, a camp imam at Bakassi has two wives and five children and is from Mairami in Konduga Local Government Area.

“Our village is still desolate and in ruins. Aside Konduga town, no other area is secure. Even if we are allowed to go and rebuild our houses we can’t do so in a completely insecure environment. At least we feel safe here, even if we are not in our home communities,’’ he said.

Their reasons for preferring to remain in camps as their permanent home are numerous. They cite the fact that they have no homes in their respective villages to return to due to the inadequate security measures put in place there. Only their local government headquarters have been barely reconstructed, leaving all their villages still desolate and in complete ruins.

They are unanimous in their decision that until their villages are reconstructed and adequate security provided to guarantee economic activities, Maiduguri camps will remain their permanent homes.

The plastic tents at Malkohi camp, situated outside Yola, the capital of Adamawa State, shares similar situations – camps are becoming permanent abode for many of its inhabitants.

The camps have developed some characteristics of a natural human settlement with political and social aspects of life for many of them since they fled their homes in 2014. They have embarked on economic activities, ranging from the rearing of domestic animals to petty trading, while weddings and naming ceremonies of newborns occasionally take place.

Most of the IDPs that spoke to Daily Trust Saturday said they had no option than to remain in the camp due to the security problem in their respective localities. They said they would return home as soon as the situation was under control.

Interestingly, life for them is not devoid of all the drama and politics that happen in every normal setting.

When Daily Trust Saturday visited the camp on Wednesday, an angry-looking woman was protesting against an alleged injustice by the camp leadership in the distribution of items donated to them by philanthropists and humanitarian groups.

Having realised the presence of a journalist, she approached him and asked if she could be interviewed to enable her expose alleged fraudulent activities of fellow IDPs entrusted with the task of assisting the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in managing the camp.

Hajiya Gana Umar seemed not to be alone in her agitation. Some women around her nodded their heads in approval as she gave reasons why the chairman of the  IDPs, Gana and the woman leader, Fatima Hassan, must be removed from their respective offices.

Having lived in the camp for five years and the fact that areas around Gwoza still had security problems, she said she had no plans to return. She prefers to settle at Malkohi. She lost her husband at the camp less than two years ago.

“The woman leader was released from camp to return home. She was sent off with gifts comprising of a bag of rice, a gallon of cooking oil and three wrappers, but she returned.

“I have lived here for five years. I came here even before the woman leader, so I understand what is going on. No one should play with my intelligence. The camp officials always shortchange us.

“The governor’s wife donated wrappers, but they selected the best for themselves, their family members and friends. They connived with others to sell many bags of rice and soya-beans. Please let the authorities know what is happening here,’’ she said.

Far from the scene of the agitation for leadership change, a lone boy was squatting near the primary school building, looking frustrated and in deep thought.

Eleven-year-old Ahmed said he had given up on meeting his parents after years of waiting. Speaking to Daily Trust Saturday, he said he had been in the camp without a relative and still doesn’t know the whereabouts of his parents or any of his relatives. “I always feel lonely,’’ he said.

Ahmed was displaced from Banki in Borno State and taken to Daware camp in Yola when he was only six years old before he was subsequently moved to Malkohi, where he lives with a woman, Kaltume Kache.

Ahmed’s mother, Aisha, sent him to buy things at the shop when Boko Haram attacked the town, making everyone to flee, yet the little boy managed to make it back home but did not find anyone. His father and mother were gone.

“Boko Haram nearly took hold of me when a group of soldiers suddenly appeared. They rescued me and took me to a village where we spent the night. In the morning they transported me and many other people and children to Mubi,’’ he said.

Daily Trust Saturday learnt that the effort of the International Committee on Red Cross (ICRC) to trace Ahmed’s family has not yet yielded any result as the camp officials attached Ahmed to a foster mother to give him a sense of family. Kaltume, his foster mother, was not around when our correspondent visited the camp.

Ahmed, who said he could still recognise his parents, said, “I want people to help me find my parents, I will be happy to reunite with my family. I was the only child when I left home five years ago. I was in Primary One,” he said.