Come to our aid, IDPs beg FG, states

…Decry poor health, sanitation facilities, harassment, sexual abuse, others

‘We openly defecate in camp’

Doosuur Iwambe, Abuja

Pregnant women and children across some Internally Displaced Persons Camps (IDPs) in the Federal Capital Territory have continued to lament their poor living condition.

Little children playing and attempting to bring normalcy to the environment were sighted by our correspondent who visited some of the camps on Friday as well as adults who were working in a bid to make ends meet.

Since the resurgence of the Boko Haram insurgency group in 2014 in the three north eastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, many citizens of the states have left their homes in search of places, to escape the killings in the areas.

Speaking with The Daily Times on Friday, most of the IDPs especially women and children lamented their inability to regain their pre-conflict way of living due to poor living condition.

According to Mrs. Hannattu Waziri, they are usually confronted with safety challenges such as harassment, frequent sexual abuse, children molestation, forced labour and poor sanitation which she said exposed members of the camps to infectious diseases.

The mother of 2 girls expressed fear that her prolonged stay at the camp with her daughters may result to a bad effect on her children.

She said: ‘’ I am afraid for my two daughters. This is not a proper place to raise a family. We are faced poor medical facilities which accommodate growth of infectious bacteria, fungi and virus in their bodies, poor feeding which exposes them to malnutrition, poor condition of infrastructure such as power, water, roads, lack of healthcare, security, education among other basic amenities.

‘’We defecate and take our bath in the open’’, she added.

Some of IDPs who expressed their unwillingness to return to their home states, due to lack of insecurity said: “Truly, we hear that in the capital of our states, there is little peace.

‘’However, my house has been destroyed; I have nowhere to stay even if I decide to go back my place. I am calling on the Federal Government to help me and my family’’, Hammanjoda Tenuh, an Indigene of Borno State added.

On her part, Halima Abubakar said that whenever food, clothes and money are donated to their community, the females hardly get them.

“The male youths scramble over them and we always end up not getting anything,” she stated.

Halima appealed to donor agencies to always consider the plight of the women in the camps by ensuring that items for women are delivered directly to them.

Another IDP who simply identified herself as Hassana said that hoodlums have capitalised on their situation to rob them of items given to them and wondered why the federal as well as their state governments cannot find decent accommodations for them in better facilities.

“We want government to save us from this menace of starvation and deprivation which is killing us faster than even the insurgency’’, she pleaded.

A youth representative and deputy to the Gwoza IDPs’ Camp at Kuchin- Goro Village, Martins Yakubu, who spoke extensively on the plights of IDPs in the camp, said they are being challenged by rising threats of hoodlums and miscreants to their existence.

He said: “While we are grateful to many sympathisers and philanthropists, who are coming to our aid, we have been confronted with the challenges of miscreants, who are taking advantage of our situation.

“There are gangsters around us that are not IDPs; their aim is to violently seize whatever donations that come to us, especially when such groups decide to distribute relief materials to us by themselves. That has been a challenge to our survival in this camp as it is threatening our survival,” Yakubu lamented.

Narrating how the Kuchin-Goro camp was formed, Yakubu said some of them fled from Gwoza, Borno State to the place because they had relatives in Kuchin-Goro.

“Gradually, other people migrated to join us and that was how this camp was formed with government ensuring that all IDPs from Gwoza are in camp here,” he added.

He mentioned those who had donated to their cause to include Catholic and Christian missions, the Islamic groups and the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).

The IDPs lamented the lack of emergency services as one of them narrated their ordeals.

“Our condition in this camp is already pathetic but it is worsened with the poor environmental conditions. We sleep in batchers with only nearby bushes available for us to defecate.

“Since the Federal Government designated it as one of the 11 IDPs’ camp in FCT some months ago, no potable water source or emergency social amenities have been provided. We continue to drink, bathe and cook from the available shallow ground water,” said Amina Aminu.

The IDPs passionately appealed to government and stakeholders to salvage the situations saying, “We are appealing passionately to government to relocate us from this place bedeviled with touts and miscreants as they constitute a bad influence on our growing children and to our wellbeing.

“We also want some basic amenities like potable water and medical care as our children’s health is threatened by mosquitoes, epidemics and other adverse conditions,” they said.

A 32-year-old Ladi Mathew said it is suffering that chased them from Gwoza as the insurgents burnt down their houses and even their produce for the year.

“That is the suffering that brought us here; they killed so many people but we hid under grasses and that was how we escaped and found ourselves in this camp,” she said.

Considering these tough challenges confronting displaced persons and vulnerability of women and children, there is a need for an accelerated deliberate effort by Federal and State governments, International Actors, Non-Governmental Organisations and the private sector to collaborate in recovering and rehabilitating these displaced women and children at the shortest delay.