Rapes in IDP camps

The Nigerian chapter of Amnesty International – the global human rights watchdog – last week released a report titled “They betrayed us” where they accused the men of the Nigerian Army and the Joint Task Force (JTF) of raping and killing women displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency. The organisation said it had proof that thousands of people had been starved to death in the Internally Displaced Persons camps in Borno state since 2015.

“This report is the result of an extensive investigation involving more than 250 interviews and covers satellite camps established by the military in seven towns in Borno state, including Bama, Banki, Rann and Dikwa. It also includes interviews with 48 women and girls released from detention and the review of video, photographic and satellite imagery,” it said.

This report corroborates the report of the Human Rights Watch, another human rights watchdog, released on October 31, 2016, detailing how government officials (camp officials, vigilante groups, policemen and soldiers) systematically raped and sexually exploited women and girls displaced by the Boko Haram conflict and how the government offers little or no protection to these hapless group and does nothing to stop the abuse not to talk of sanctioning the abusers.

The recent report by Amnesty said “as Nigeria’s military recovered territory from the armed group in 2015, it ordered people living in rural villages to the satellite camps, in some cases indiscriminately killing those who remained in their homes. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled or were forced from these areas. The military screened everyone arriving to the satellite camps, and in some locations detained most men and boys aged between 14 and 40 as well as women who travelled unaccompanied by their husbands. The detention of so many men has left women to care for their families alone. Scores of women described how soldiers and Civilian JTF members have used force and threats to rape women in satellite camps, including by taking advantage of hunger to coerce women to become their “girlfriends”, which involved being available for sex on an ongoing basis.”

Equally, in 2016, news reports emerged (obviously from foreign media) that thousands of IDPs in over 20 camps around Maiduguri were starving to death because food and relief materials allocated to the camps are either diverted or stolen by government and or camp officials. In fact, the UK Guardian of Tuesday 13 September, 2016 reported protests by angry camp residents over the stealing of food meant for the residents while they are left to starve to death. The best feeding ration any IDP camp got was once a day. The paper quoted a camp resident thus: “In the night they load up vehicles with food and take it away to their houses…But I can’t complain. [A local official] said that if I complain he will tell soldiers that I am a member of Boko Haram and they will kill me.”

Meanwhile, Refugee International (RI), in its April 2016 Report titled “Nigeria’s Displaced Women & Girls: Humanitarian Community at Odds, Boko Haram’s Survivors Forsaken”, detailed the gory realities confronting the IDPs under the nose of Nigerian government officials including rape and sexual exploitation of women and girls, who in most cases, have to submit to the demands of the officials, soldiers and policemen for sex to be able to eat and possibly feed their children or family members.

What has been the government’s response to all these reports? Denial and cover ups or when the reports are too glaring, the government ignores it. Last week, it hired protesters to picket the Abuja office of Amnesty International for ostensibly exposing the many atrocities being committed by the Nigerian government and the military in the supposed fight against the Boko Haram insurgency.

But the government cannot continue to deny the obvious. The living conditions in the camps are a fitting description of Nigerian state; a state that, in reality, views its citizens mainly as nuisance or even adversaries and treats them as such. The government cannot expect citizens to be patriotic when it does not treat them with respect. Citizens will be unwilling to make helpless sacrifices or even give their lives for a state they know does not care so much about them.

It is time the government come to terms with its responsibilities and treat its citizens the way citizens of a civilised country should be treated. Only then can it expect patriotism, dedication and cooperation from its citizens.

To begin with, the government must thoroughly investigate these abuses and punish those found guilty.