Survivors of Boko Haram
On 24 December, the BBC reported that Boko Haram was ‘technically defeated’. A friend posted the link on Facebook. I read it. And then read the comments from journalist Jack Vince, based in Maiduguri in Borno, northern Nigeria and Fiona Lovatt based in Kano, 500km to the west, where thousands of people displaced by Boko Haram took refuge.
Jack responded– This is NOT true. In fact, it could compel the insurgents to do something terrible and newsworthy as has been the trend. Soldiers and civilians alike still get killed DAILY.
Fiona wrote– It’s unfair of BBC to broadcast such a story because it is a provocation to the bandits and butchers who may well flex their muscles as a show of arms. As Jack says, civilians and soldiers pay with their lives and BBC moves on to the next story. Let us continue with the good we can do in the face of horrors and misinformation.
And that’s what Jack and Fiona do. Jack continues with his support of Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Maiduguri. He moves in and out of the camps, many of them in schools: three years ago the government closed schools to provide accommodation for IDPs, effectively turning every classroom in the city into a dormitory and ending state education for Borno’s children. Fiona continues to provide — among the many Lovatt Foundation projects — the Children of Borno (COB) home in Maiduguri where a local staff provides care and an education for 30 children orphaned by Boko Haram. Recently, she travelled to Maiduguri to visit the children, the staff, and friends of the house.
Both Jack and Fiona document their activities on Facebook, sometimes very briefly, sometimes with images. Facebook is also very useful when seeking information about the ever-present conflict. Here are some of their recent stories, in a series that started here and continued here. (Marian)
1. Fiona Visits Maiduguri
26 December 2015
Our older orphans drew upon the knowledge and experience gained from their parents in the village life they used to know.
Working the familiar materials and technologies they quickly erected a shelter for a pair of young goats they will raise.
The children demonstrate competency in much that their parents taught them: gardening, cooking, kindness, construction, needlework, etc.
We aim to keep this knowledge alive.
(At the beginning, our primary concern was for the girls. We didn’t grasp the intensity of Boko Haram’s attacks on the region’s males: they have kidnapped boys, slaughtered boys, abducted boys, and targeted men. Among the IDPs that the Lovatt Foundation has worked with in Kano, 96% have been women and children. The males simply didn’t make it to Kano. So finding boys in Maiduguri, boys with sisters who were on our shortlist, we just took them all.)
28 December
I am a simple person.These two hammers made from recycled items give me great pleasure.
They are gifts for small people with no parents and I am excited to think what their small hands will make.
January 1
The sack of oranges came through the checkpoints en route, from a farmer’s truck to the house. The children have planted several citrus trees for future bounty on site but this immediate gift of fruit brought out song and dance and a game with clapping to celebrate the arrival of oranges.
The Civilian Joint Task Force got one of the watermelons I was carrying. It was a gift for those guys who have done so much to fight off insurgency over the last four years.
It was just a spontaneous aunty thing and I have never done that at a check point before. I guess the previous 8 hours on the slalom course of check points must have worn me down. I had 8 watermelons on board.
Nimble hands at work on these cold mornings. First with pencils drawing the known world.
Something sweet in both hands: in the left, familiar items from daily life; in the right, the natural crystals from sugar cane’s first boiling.
Then with needles to bind a set of pictures and words into a handmade book. Art has become a regular joyful and serious endeavour and the children are binding their own books of drawings.
A thorn repairs a broken sandal /jandal/ slipper.
January 2
[A typical brief Facebook message, seeking information.]
Ok, Maiduguri folks… who can provide an update on the sounds like thunder under a clear and starry sky?
January 4
We have three adults on site most of the day so our learning circles are small and focused. Sometimes even more. A variety of activities through the day, with the children rotating, means that the children can still be lapping up knowledge at 5pm just for the joy of learning.
Each child can expect some quality time with each adult daily. Nanny Ruqqaiya will help with grooming, health, hygiene and lots of practical skills in agriculture and home economics, Aunty Amina will sing and play when she has finished some blackboard work. Mallam Umar dishes out regular smiles and good humour even while he delivers the knowledge and skills he has to share.
COB students use two alphabets: Roman and Arabic. Observing an expert at work is one way a child can see the conventions of print.
They have four languages to use through the day: Kanuri, Hausa, Arabic, and English.
January 7
Some electricians tidied up all the loose wires.
We thank the neighbour who saw the need and arranged the labour.
A painter walked up the drive, loaded down with cans that put a gloss on the interior walls, from floor to shoulder height, with a glossy chocolate paint to enable us to wipe off finger marks.
We thank Like Minds, based in Abuja, who arranged this gift. Much appreciated with 300 little fingers.
Then a delegation of volunteers from Like Minds turned up with mink blankets, some art supplies, two white boards, and a case of books.
You can see Fiona needed a moment to wipe her eyes.
What better way to cope with a day when the oil paint was keeping us out of the house.
Many thanks to all concerned for these great gifts. The whole household would like to bring a elderly woman out of an IDP camp to join the family as a grandmother. We are looking at a woman who has no family and needs care, so that her last days may have some of the joy and beauty we are experiencing. ( I have discovered that our smallest children give a rather wonderful foot massage).
January 9
In the 10 days or so that I have been visiting our house, many more good things have happened.
We are going for a mach 2 goat pen, using modern materials which have been purchased and an enthusiast is about to join the children in the construction work.
We have thoroughly cleaned the whole compound. A lot of litter had been present to begin with and it has taken some work to shift the thinking from an acceptance of litter to a standard of no litter at all.
Some hand-me-down clothes of good quality arrived and every child got a new outfit from the collection.
The sewing machine has been used a great deal for repairs and lessons.
Thirty guava trees have arrived and a couple of local organics aficionados have offered workshops on composting, soil enrichment, dry season cultivation etc.
Writing and drawing in the sand has been a popular activity. And getting the rhythms right with the mortar and pestle means there is some music in the cooking.
Staff have had oodles of professional development.
A reading culture is in full swing.
Each evening the house settles down with pleasant activities. Sometimes all of us are in the parlour with story telling or discussions (like the one about getting a grandmother), or just enjoying books, art supplies, and maths sets.
Sometimes the other rooms host a happy little group doing other things. There is a love of song and a love of learning that is palpable.
And yes, on three of these ten nights, after the children are asleep, there have been sounds of distant hostilities. We are grateful for the distance.
January 10
Local version of games-in-the-round. Each game has its own song and actions. There is quite a repertoire. Psychiatry seems to have under estimated the healing power that children can experiend with the games of childhoods without PlayStation and cartoons.The repertoire keeps our children engaged with their small community. You can’t get that from TV.
So here’s a game: place a stone on the ground and make a circle around it. One person is a kind of “it” and lifts his foot on to his knee.
The other players all stack up, link up, and balance on one foot for a few lines of rhyming stuff before they all make a lunge for the stone.
January 13
639 DAYS — 1 Year + 274 Days Dorcas Yakubu, one of the #ChibokGirls was kidnapped. Will she ever come home? #BringBackOurGirls
January 18
We are thankful that Like Minds has introduced us to a wonder food based on groundnuts and other goodies. This highly nutritious breakfast package comes with regular measures of height and weight gains so the children have beautiful data for the study of statistics too.
Figures on maternal mortality vary: some say 1 in 40 pregnancies ends in the death of the mother; others say 1 in 13 mothers die in childbirth. One of the risks to women here is retarded bone growth due to childhood nutrition being under par. We want all our girls to avoid that risk and it begins now.
2. Jack Visits the Camps; & Chibok
20 December
The woman in the picture is Malama Hadiza Adamu. An IDP with a different story. She is originally from Yauri in Kebbi State, but was based in Doron Baga town with her husband (now deceased) and children before it was attacked by Boko Haram insurgents last year. Her husband worked with a community health organisation and was part of a team administering immunisation at the Lake Chad area when he was killed by the insurgents.
Prior to the onslaught on Doro and Baga towns, Malama Hadiza Adamu was in her native Yauri on a visit. She had to return to Maiduguri to look for her displaced family. Members of her family were six when she left them. She has found four so far, two children and two grandchildren.
Camp officials would not allow her into the camp to see her son and daughter-in-law and would not admit her as an IDP herself. She had to linger at the gate hoping to catch a glimpse of them. Sometimes she does and they chat, other times she doesn’t and has to leave disappointed.
Presently, she is a homeless IDP and that’s what makes her story different. There are others like her, as well, from Doron Baga, ten individuals in all who were given an open space in a verandah by a kindhearted individual in town. It’s all he could afford. They make fire and sleep around it at night when it is exceptionally cold. No food. No shelter. No money. No possessions. No hope.
Malama Hadiza and two of her granddaughters beg for alms and look for house chores they could do for money. That was how I discovered her when I got home two days ago to see a strange woman and her grandchildren sweeping my compound. My sister made them do it. We got talking and she told me her story.
She told me how she was doing well in her fish and trading business in Doron Baga before the attack. She told me how she badly needs a roof over her head and those of her granddaughters and companions right now. And how she needs to be doing any petty business to stop begging and get off the streets. But for the lack of transport fare for herself and relations, she told me how she’s willing to return to Yauri to put the pieces of her life back together again. I recoiled with emotion when she told me that from the money she makes begging, she takes care of a sick companion. How kind? How selfless?
When Mike Ile and #TeamSocialMedia brought relief materials to Maiduguri, as palliative measure, I reserved 10 pieces of blankets for Malama Hadiza and her companions who, unlike those at the camps, are having the misfortune of sleeping in the open in this north-pole-winter kinda harmattan cold Maiduguri residents are presently experiencing.
I spoke to a National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) official about taking them in and he said it’s not possible given the security challenges of the state. I may have to visit the state coordinator on that.
#Selah [trans: Think about it!]
Anytime I think of it, I wonder why things happen in ways they do. In this part of the world, we forget misfortune, no matter how terrible, with the speed of light.
Less than two months ago, A LOT of soldiers were killed in action at Gudumbali, headquarters of Guzamala Local Government Area of northern Borno by members of the dreaded Boko Haram insurgents. Before, during and after that incident, keen-observing Maiduguri residents have always known that places in that location like Gudumbali, Kareto, Damasak, Kukawa and the entire bush paths linking these places with Benisheikh to the left and Baga to the right harbour criminal and terrorist elements.
The impression has always been that only youth who are at least 13 years old and above and have ulterior motives could still live in such places. This is so because even soldiers abhor the area. Yet, daily, we see Guzamala Mass Transit buses filled with young and energetic men from Baga Park in Maiduguri heading in the direction the military don’t tread with impunity.
It’s not paranoia on our part. It’s not mere scepticism. It is common sense why we feel the way we do. It’s either these people are members of the vile group themselves or they are outrightly complicit. Accomplices who should be quizzed by relevant authorities for the requisite information needed in decimating the insurgents and prosecuting the war to its logical conclusion.
Ironically, everyone seems to know this, except, apparently, members of the armed forces, police, civil defense, customs and Immigration services through whose checking points the said buses zoom out of town. We have heard confessions from apprehended insurgents who follow such buses to town to buy supplies; yet, what we observe daily is the extortion of money from the drivers plying the routes and nothing more. I wish I knew what members of the DSS [Directorate of State Security Services] do for a living. I really wish…
Selah!
22 December
Dear friends,
It’s with a heart laden with pains that I punch the keys on my phone to scribble this post. My eyes have seen and my heart has felt the pains of the internally displaced and homeless victims of terrorism.
The aged woman laboriously dragging herself around with crutches in the picture moved me to tears as did the 70 or more years old granny whose nose was broken in a stampede all in a bid to have a mere bar of soap or piece of clothing. An old man who shouldn’t be less than 80 years of age whispered to Dr Mohammed Said Jidda and I that he’d not eaten since morning and it was past 4:00 pm or thereabouts, at the time.
To. What. End?
The degree of lack among the internally displaced persons at the Gubio Road camp, as in others, overwhelms the effort of NEMA, SEMA and other caregivers, put together, whose intervention programmes seem distinctly inadequate in the circumstances.
Over a hundred big bags of assorted items including clothes, shoes, toiletries, pharmaceuticals, writing materials and so on were distributed to the people at the camp housing over 15,000 persons. I must say a big THANK YOU to my brother and friend, Femi Owolabi, the #iCare4TheIDPs family and every individual or institution that has contributed in cash or kind to the laudable project.
There’s need for A LOT more of such interventions. We must never relent and must, therefore, continue to advocate for more relief materials for the IDPs, the hungry, the homeless, the naked and all destitute and unfortunate victims of terrorism in the theatre of sorrows.
Having felt and observed, up close, the remote and immediate needs of the people, and having had firsthand knowledge of the best ways to reach out given my contacts at the camps, among the security agents and other relevant stakeholders, I wish to offer myself and foster my little effort, without reservation, to the cause of these people who make me cry always. I, therefore, hope to source for these basic needs from kindhearted individuals and institutions for the needy and advocate for support from all and sundry in this drive to identify and meet specific needs.
Friends, you only need to see for yourselves to appreciate the level of suffering victims of insurgency in the northeast are passing through. Obviously, for no fault of theirs. This is an appeal to our humanity, an appeal to our hearts and minds, an appeal to our generosity and an appeal for the downtrodden and unfortunate victims in these flash points of sorrow, tears and blood. Please, key on to this timeline for updates on activities.
Thank you.
24 December
SAMBISA FOREST. Boko Haram, insurgency, wanton killing of human lives and tales of gore readily come to mind at the mere mention.
BUT, some Nigerians and the world may not know that it’s an awesome game reserve where wildlife frolic in a scenery of evergreen foliage: trees, elephants, apes, snakes, flora and fauna too numerous to mention.
The first Borno State Amusement Park located along Konduga-Bama road is actually in Sambisa before it was relocated and annexed to the zoo in Maiduguri city-centre. Forestry workers, tourists and hikers still have fond nostalgic memories of the place before it became a sanctuary of sorts to members of the vile marauding band of rag tag insurgents.
Baboons, monkeys, rare birds and other wildlife could be seen as pets in chains or cages in Maiduguri with soldiers, especially, who have been to Sambisa, Bita, Pulka, Alagarno and the Cameroonian border.
That’s how I met PAPA, the little baboon in the picture, displaying extraordinary intelligence. From ripping open and drinking a satchel of “pure water” like a human being to cracking groundnut and displaying other stunts, the baboon really impressed me. Sadly, Papa is sick. I don’t know the kind of heart I’m having, but I couldn’t bear to watch as it breathed heavily while everyone around wanted it to entertain them instead of resting after the treatment it had received from a veterinarian in the neighbourhood.
Maybe a legislation should be in place for endangered animals like Papa to be rounded up and taken to the zoo here in Maiduguri, as palliative measure, before the military will be done chasing the trespassers far away from their ancestral homes in Sambisa. Oops! “The war is over”, right, Mr Lai Mohammed?
26 December
Two days ago, I was at the Gubio Road Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp in Maiduguri. To see any of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) officials.
I didn’t want to go inside because my presence could cause a pandemonium. The IDPs would think I’d come to distribute relief materials and might start queuing up and stampeding. So, I decided to wait outside.
Suddenly, I saw a guy in a nice suit walking towards me and assumed he’s the one.
“Good morning, sir”. We exchanged pleasantries.
While I was trying to explain why I’d come to see him, he said…
“No, no, no, no… I don’t work with NEMA. I should be the one to thank and say SIR to you. My name is Musa Kash. I saw you standing here and decided to come and say hello. You gave me the suit and shoes I am putting on. I am an IDP; before now, I had no presentable clothes I could wear to go visit my relatives in town. Now I think I look good enough to see even the governor. Thanks to you”, he told me in Hausa before giving me a hug.
I was like WOW with mouth agape! I had no idea Musa was one of the IDPs in a looooooong queue waiting for relief materials sometimes last week when Femi Owolabi, Mohammed Said Jidda, Abubakar Gambo, Israel D Ikyum and I were at the camp to distribute items provided by the #iCare4TheIDPs team.
Musa shook hands again with me before walking away with head held high. It’s funny how good grooming could positively affect gait and self esteem.
Indeed, one needn’t be a millionaire before effecting the desired change in the lives of the downtrodden, the less privileged orphans, widows, homeless and displaced persons. The Musa Kash experience taught me so#
You can make a life by what you give!
Selah!
27 December
Angels, indeed, walk the earth in human forms. Remember Malama Hadiza Garba, the lady from Yauri whose story I did a couple of days ago?
Well, for those who didn’t follow that story, she’s a woman originally from Yauri in Kebbi State, but based in Doron Baga, whose husband, a community health worker, was slaughtered by Boko Haram insurgents at the Lake Chad area during an immunisation exercise. She was in Yauri when Doro was sacked, but had to return to Maiduguri to look for her displaced family. She’s seen most of them so far, but for two still missing. She made attempts to be taken in as an IDP herself, but was refused entry. She and her relatives have since been sleeping in the open in the verandah of a good Samaritan here in Maiduguri. She’s sick and needs to see a doctor and wants to return to her native Yauri with her relatives to put the pieces of her life back together again.
I reserved ten blankets for her and her companions from #TeamSocialMedia’s relief items brought by the amiable Mike Ile; clothes, shoes, toiletries and other stuff from #iCare4TheIDPs team brought by Femi Owolabi, the journalist cum philanthropist. From these items, in her nothingness, she selected few and made me accompany her to Gubio Road IDP camp where she redistributed them to the needy. A quintessential large heart of gold.
I have since been contacted by kindhearted Nigerians since that story and other related tear-inducing tales from the theatre of sorrows.
An affectionate friend and a brother who insists that I don’t mention his name has donated N105,000 for her medication, transport fare for herself and relatives from Maiduguri to Yauri, and for her to rent a place and start up a small scale petty business when she gets home. A friend from Borno State Government House who doesn’t want his name mentioned has donated N10,000. Another friend, from Minna, who prefers to remain anonymous donated N10,000, as did yet another friend who simply said “No bros! Don’t mention my name..” My good friend, Mr Kolawole Fabeku, has donated N10,000 also. A lady from Europe has agreed to sponsor two orphans (a male and a female) to school.
Now, I bet, you’ll agree with me that angels, indeed, walk the earth in human forms. In a million fold, I pray for a replenishing of the fountain of your generosity. We could reach more of these unfortunate folks at the point of their needs if we give our windows mite today to save a soul.
Watch out for the distribution of the donations on this timeline and thank you very much for the requisite nudge.
28 December
People died. In my community alone, three people have so far reported losing their relatives resident in Jiddari Polo where Boko Haram insurgents attacked last night after they’d attacked a village that’s only a walkable distance away from Jiddari. In all intents and purposes, that area, though a village, could be considered an integral part of Maiduguri due to proximity. The erroneous impression that the place is very far away is sickening. In fact, since Jiddari Polo is in Maiduguri, the village is in Maiduguri as well, that’s what it entails.
Houses in the village and in Jiddari Polo were burnt and people killed. My source, an eyewitness, saw corpses of men, women and children. Another source in one of the hospitals in Maiduguri testified to seeing the dead and wounded.
I understand when the authorities try to downplay the true situation of things by employing propaganda for diplomatic reasons and issuing press statements promising peace and being “on top of the situation”. If media blackout on the activities of terrorists could put a stop to the bombings and killings of innocent human lives, I’d become the number one advocate. I therefore feel pained that people are dying and some elements want us to pretend all is fine. What I find nauseating is when individuals and media organisations try to conceal the truth in order not to portray the administration in bad light after it had promised a December 2015 deadline. If we’d acted this way in the last administration, it would have still been in government.
The true security situation has not changed much since the last administration dislodged the insurgents from their phantom caliphate six weeks before the last general elections. In this administration as in the last, the insurgents still haven’t reclaimed what they lost, but the killings, bombings and arson remain the same or almost so.
Mr President, ceteris paribus, has the innate desire to decimate the insurgents, but for reasons that apparently defy all reasoning.
Selah!
31 December
Before now, no amount of joke was enough to put a smile on Malama Hadiza Garba’s face. A million thanks to everyone responsible for bringing that smile upon the faces of orphans, widows, the homeless and internally displaced persons, victims of insurgency in the northeast theatre of sorrows.
Malama Hadiza whose husband, you’d recall, was slaughtered by the insurgents, lost members of her family, have two still missing and have been homeless and sleeping in the open until concerned friends on the facebook platform stepped in to provide the needed help when I told her story. As I scribble these lines, Malama Hadiza, her children, grandchildren and relatives are already on their way to Yauri, her hometown, where she’d be putting her shattered life back together again.
A million thanks to all who contributed to bring this about. I emphasized that God only used me to facilitate the feat. She was in tears when she was thanking and praying for all contributors. I wish to assure all that from the look on her face while she prayed, the blessing on every hand of kindness is assured.
Next will be the buying and distributing of food to non-government-owned IDP camps with what is left. Life in such places is better imagined than experienced. The desire is to reach the forgotten. Thanks for your generosity.
Maiduguri is a city replete with people who are in dire need of succour more than we realise. Victims of the ongoing war prowl the streets begging for alms and living in conditions we used to see in war movies. All hope is not lost though, their lives can be made better#
Selah!
1 January
There was singing, dancing and clapping at the Gubio Road IDPs camp when we got there. The journalist in me spurred the being-nosy-for-the-newsworthy syndrome. I therefore sought to know what the pandemonium was about and alas! It was Aure! A wedding fatiya between one IDP and another.
They met, fell in love and got married while being internally displaced persons in the same camp. Obviously, no amount of insurgency, strife and pain could dampen the spirit of the determined.
‘Ashe a na yin aure a nan?’ (So people get married here?) I asked a lady standing nearby.
‘Sosai ma kuwa’ (Of course they do), she retorted. ‘Kullum a na aure. Wani lokaci so biyu a sati daya’ (Always they do. Sometimes twice in a week), she added.
I was about thanking her and leaving when another girl who had been quiet all along dropped what I still consider a bombshell:
‘Mallam, da sanyin nan sai da aure fa. Mace ta zauna ba BUGI har shekara guda ai hakurin ta wuce misali’ (Mallam, with this level of cold, marriage is necessary. For a woman to stay for a whole year without BUGI is too much to endure)
Buuuuhahahahahaaaa… I had to explode. I really couldn’t control myself.
#LallaiRayuwaACamp
#AKwaiBirgewa
2 January
FREEDOM is an integral part of human nature. People want to be able to make personal decisions and live their lives as freely as the birds of the air, fish inside water and animals in the wild.Limits and restrictions appall humans, reason no sane person desires to be confined to a cell or prison system, ask prison wardens.
Variety is the spice of life because it’s in humans to want to do things differently and not get tied down to the boredom of routine.
The true situation at the IDP camps in the northeast encompasses waking up in the morning, sitting or hanging out with the same people everyday to wait for meals and sitting in groups (majalisu) to chitchat and go to bed when it’s time only for the circle to spin again the next day and on and on for as long as the camps have been opened.
I am neither a psychiatrist nor a psychologist, but common sense is all that is needed to know that people who are unfortunate to be so confined can’t be normal and regular folks like the rest of us. Routines and inactivity kill the brain and therefore the man.
The camps (uncompleted housing units and public schools) lack recreational facilities necessary for the mental development of the growing children. None of the many camps I have visited has at least a television viewing centre. Children love TV for God’s sake. They don’t get to see Tales By Moonlight, Barney and Friends, Sesame Street and cartoons like kids should. Why can’t a scheme be devised to take the kids to the zoo and amusement park once in a while? There could be inter-camp sport competition for boys and girls. Knitting and other micro-scale economic activities could be introduced to empower the people and create in them the act of self reliance while they wait for conditions to be conducive enough for them to return to their original homes. The wait may take a lot longer than we are made to believe, though. Also, the children need to be educated. Very much so. In Qur’anic and western forms. The right teachers should be employed. The last ones I saw were IDPs themselves who just volunteered to help. Great idea. Problem, however, is that these teachers need A LOT of schooling themselves.
Since the people are not allowed to leave the camps ‘for security reasons‘”’, there’s need to make the camps, their temporary homes, as conducive as a home can be for human habitation.
The government has the wherewithal to bring these suggestions about. However, it is one thing to come up with great ideas, but a different ball game to get them implemented.
7 January
Gunmen believed to be members of the dreaded Boko Haram insurgents have, on Sunday the 4th of January 2015, succeeded in chasing out the Nigerian troops stationed in Doron Baga (a village few kilometres from the Nigerian half of the Lake Tchad), Baga Town, Mile Four (Multinational Joint Task Force Camp that consisted of Nigerian, Nigerien, Tchad and Camerounian soldiers) up to Cross Kauwa the T-Junction leading to Monguno-Maiduguri road.
So far, only God can fathom the number of casualties. Civilians who escaped the onslaught are still storming Maiduguri the Borno State capital for refuge. Soldiers who managed to escape noticed that the insurgents with superior fire power had foreign nationals especially Tchadian soldiers in their ranks. No air support. No re-enforcement save wanton ineptitude in the tactical chain of command.
Invariably, the insurgents are now in absolute control of all the borders between Borno and Tchad Republic at the Baga-Lake Tchad area, Borno and Niger Republic at the Damasak area and Borno and Cameroun at the Banki area.
If this impunity is not a siege, what is? If this affront is not an insult on our territorial integrity, what is? If this lacklustre stance of the government at the centre is not a conspiracy, what is? If silence is not complicity, please save us this trauma and tell us what is…
Distributing relief materials to occupants of a camp having about 15,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) is herculean. The team, Abubakar Gambo, Muhammad Ahmad and I, had a hard time doing the good job.
Because the population overwhelmed the amount of items for distribution, we decided to separate the beneficiaries into groups of #orphans, #schoolchildren, #pregnantwomen, #lactatingmothers and #theaged.
In a line that’s as long as the eyes could see, I was surprised to see so many pregnant and lactating mothers. I thought they were kidding but the women, so many of them, were actually pregnant. The federal, states and local governments should really consider prioritizing maternal and newborn healthcare at the camps.
After several hours of distributing the items ourselves, we had to resort to entrusting the remainder to NEMA and military officials when it became obvious that we couldn’t finish the exercise in one day.
By and large, we had another proof that the IDPs are desirous of interpersonal intervention. The presence and effect of Red Cross and UNICEF could be seen and felt even by the blind.
In our presence, the humanitarian organisations offload trailer loads of food and other relief materials. Coincidentally, this usually happens anytime we’re at the camp. Three days is enough for the IDPs to start complaining of hunger. A disturbing phenomenon.
Having observed this trend up close, it’s either the IDPs are ungrateful gluttons or the items are misappropriated. Either way, the people desire to be reached at the point of their individual needs#
Selah!
23 January
In Chibok, this woman cried and made me do the same. On her face, raw pain could be seen and felt by even the most uncaring and indifferent of hearts. Her last-born child was one of the Chibok girls abducted by Boko Haram.
I therefore feel pain in my spirit when people I love and respect on this virtual world publicly state, to the chagrin of what I hold dear, that the abduction was a hoax. I feel a searing pain in my body, soul and spirit as a result.
Nobody can feel the loss of a child like a mother who laboured for nine months and is now compelled by circumstances to keep unending vigils while enduring every second of every minute, every minute of every hour, every hour of every day and everyday since that day her child was taken away like a chaff by a hurricane.
Please, if you don’t have words of consolation for these grieving mothers, don’t add insult to injury. Please.
