FROM conception as we ruminated on how to mark the ‘low key’ (apologies to Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s regime) celebrations of the country’s 64th independence anniversary today, the idea was to express anger, frustration and then rail at the fate of millions of fellow citizens who have been condemned to live perpetually in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps scattered especially across the northern parts of Nigeria. But on deeper reflection and contemplation, I held back and expanded the scope. I did so because it dawned on me, in a jarring manner, that many, probably majority of our citizens qualify to wear the label of IDPs. We can console ourselves by arguing that we have not yet been uprooted from our ancestral homes or comfort zones, and herded into confinements or camps in strange lands.
I will be the first to admit and acknowledge that the consolation of not yet being confined in, or to, a camp in the middle of nowhere, and possibly surrounded by suspicious and hostile communities, is a big deal for which many of us should give thanks with grateful hearts. Let’s quickly illustrate with a real picture of what a typical IDP camp translates into. There are, as we write, many Nigerian toddlers, pre-teens, teenagers, and tweenagers (children in their 20s) who have known no other homes except the IDP camps. They were born there. They were nurtured there. They were raised in IDP camps. The ones who are fortunate attended primary and secondary schools inside the camps or just outside the perimeters of the camps. Those who were not that fortunate were born inside the camps, some of them prematurely. They took ill inside the camps with little or no health facilities. So they died inside the camps. And they were buried in unmarked graves inside the camps. That’s how fate has conspired with soulless Nigerian rulers to deal a bad hand to some of our citizens.
It has to be acknowledged that Nigeria has had issues of displaced persons in the course of its journey towards nationhood – though the efforts to attain the status of a nation has remained elusive. However, the problem of displaced persons in the past had been temporary and fleeting. In the past people had been displaced due to intra and/or inter – communities’ crises and bloody clashes. In some other situations it had been poorly demarcated boundaries between states that ignites conflicts among border communities. There had been other reasons for displacement of people from their homes and communities. We dare say that many of these displacements had been temporary. Victims were often quickly returned home and resettled. Nothing in the past experiences approximate the scale of what has been happening in our country these past twenty -five years since the return to rule by civilians in 1999.
The advent of the terrorist Islamist group, Boko Haram, in Borno State in the north-east of the country was at the root of the low level insurrection and insurgency wracking Nigeria. Those who know say that Boko Haram roughly translates to ‘western education is evil’. The adherents of this ideology claim that their bloody opposition to western education was, and still is, rooted in Islam. They argued that the way to the future passes through Islamic and Arabic education. Any other thing is haram. Global jihadist groups which were operating in other regions of the world latched unto the Boko Haram to infiltrate into Nigeria, and to expand the reign of terror. Among the terrorist groups were Ansaru, ISIS-WAP (West Africa Province), and the Fulani Militia. All these sectarian groups were ranked in the top 10 of the most dreaded terrorist organisations in the world when they operated in Nigeria.
With time, and in the face of official helplessness or connivance, terrorising Nigeria and Nigerians became a franchise. In the guise of protecting the south east Igbo homeland from the ravages of terrorists and the perceived evils of the central government, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) founded a militia, the Eastern Security Network (ESN). IPOB is a self – styled self determination group which said it is committed to the excision of the former Eastern region from Nigeria. IPOB was banned by governors in the south east states and then listed as a terrorist organisation by the central government in Abuja. But a court of law in Nigeria has since ruled that IPOB was not a terrorist body. And there’s no evidence yet that the federal government of Nigeria has successfully challenged and upturned the court’s judgment. In any case, no other government in any other part of the world recognised Abuja’s branding of IPOB as a terrorist organisation.
However, the franchise started by Boko Haram, Ansaru, ISIS-WAP and the Fulani Militia blossomed. These terror groups birthed abductions and kidnappings for ransom as well as murders for rituals. Those in government, terrorists, kidnappers, ritualists, abductors and sundry freelancers in crime competed amongst themselves on which of them will get the credit or plaudits for making Nigeria the biggest crime scene in the history of the world. For the avoidance of doubt, they are still at it – plundering Nigeria and leaving citizens desperate, despondent and hopeless.
There are no reliable figures and statistics but it is routinely estimated that tens or even hundreds of thousands of Nigerians have been kidnapped in the last two decades. Some of the kidnap victims were freed after friends and families paid ransom to the kidnappers. Others had been killed even after ransoms had been paid. Right now the kidnap-for-ransom business is a full-fledged industry. Some sub national governments have since started negotiating with kidnappers and bandits to lay down their arms and give peace a chance in exchange for rehabilitation and settlement. A few years ago, a governor of Katsina state was seen savouring a photo-op with bandits. The clincher- the bandits in the photograph were seen with their automatic rifles hanging on their shoulders. About the same time Alhaji Nasir el-Rufai, a former governor of Kaduna state was alleged to have paid off terrorists to stop terrorising his state. Currently, the governor of Zamfara State and his predecessor who is one of the defence ministers in the Tinubu federal cabinet are at daggers-drawn about who between them is the primary funder of terrorists in that beleaguered state. They are washing their dirty (sorry bandit) linens in the media and also in the court of law.
The combined activities of our insensitive and wicked rulers on the one hand, and those of terrorists of all descriptions on the other hand, have ensured that in one sense or the other all of us have become IDPs. Just as with the issue of kidnapping, there are no reliable data on those formally listed as Internally Displaced Persons in our country. But there’s an estimation. Internally Displaced Persons camps in Benue, Borno, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Nasarawa, Plateau, Sokoto, Zamfara, among others, host well over three million people. Apart from the formal IDP camps, there are hundreds of informal camps scattered across majority of the states in the north of the country, and Abuja. Our country is ranked among the top 10 in the world for IDPs. And we are not fighting any conventional war.
Nigeria is already a difficult place to live in given serial bungling of successive administrations at all levels. The situation becomes worse for those who have been uprooted from their places of abode. That is the experience of a typical IDP. Farmers are separated from their farms. The same for herders. Business people face the same dilemma. Along with the separation comes loss of income and probably savings. Some people may never recover from the initial sudden dislocation. They go to their graves defeated and broken. There have been cases of sexual exploitation of women and girls in the camps, and indeed outright rape by those who are supposed to provide help and succour. The way our governments behave, it is difficult not to have the impression that IDP camps have come to stay, and they are expected to remain part of our national life. There are no plans whether short, medium or long, in the public domain for permanently securing the country in a sustainable and enduring manner so as to return the IDPs to their homesteads.
Instead, the experience has been that many Nigerians are technically becoming IDPs. How? For any Nigerian who is not where he or she should be, that person qualifies to be classified as a displaced person. The twenty million or so Nigerian children who should be in school but they are not are displaced kids. The many workers whose employers have shut down their businesses because of unfriendly environment have become displaced persons. Small business owners who can no longer cope with the spiralling costs of public utilities including electricity, and who have had to relocate from urban centres to rural communities are now technically speaking IDPs. The same applies to those who have had to move because they can no longer afford house rents in places they have lived in for decades. Every Nigerian youth who has been compelled by suffocating economic and political environment at home to flee Nigeria by foot through the Sahara Desert is a displaced person. Every family which has been split because members are running to different parts of the world for better opportunities falls into the category of displaced persons.
A country that held so much promise about half a century ago has fallen into gloom. Citizens of Nigeria now increasingly feel trapped. Nobody is happy and many are not hopeful except the few in the upper reaches of our governments at all levels. This is part of the story of Nigeria as it turns 64 today.
