Towards a more humane treatment of Internally Displaced Persons
On October 31, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report 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.
Expectedly, the Nigerian state came out feigning surprise at the scale and nature of the abuse described in the report. Same day, the President ordered the police and state governors of the affected states to commence investigation into the issue. The police in Borno state also came out expressing shock over the report and even questioning its authenticity. According to the commissioner of police in the state, Damian Chukwu “we have not received any complaint or report from any IDP camp on the issue, so the whole thing is strange to me”.
To be sure, these are all hypocritical responses. An official of the Human Rights Watch, appearing on Channels Television November 1, affirmed that the body had passed on the summary of the report to the government since July but the government hadn’t taken a single step to redress the situation. She said they also informed the Minister of Women Affairs, who, to be fair, made some inquiries but nothing much came out of it. What is more, several international bodies, including the United Nations, had since February alerted the government of the systematic abuses being perpetrated by its officials in the camp and the government turned a blind eye to the warnings.
Coming out now to feign surprise and horror at the HRW report is pure hypocrisy and an attempt to appear blameless before the international community. But we know the reality. The government just does not care about those at the internally displaced people’s camps scattered all over the country especially in the states of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa – the three states most ravaged by the Boko Haram insurgency. Earlier in the year, 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 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. At a time, it even denied foreign media access to the camps. So, the government cannot, in all honesty, feign ignorance of the content of the HRW report. It knew of the abuses but was too preoccupied with fighting Boko Haram to care about the plight of the IDPs.
The government cannot continue to deny the obvious. The IDP camps are disasters waiting to happen. The situations 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.
The government should be ashamed that the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies are now working to feed the IDPs to prevent the catastrophe that is bound to happen if things are left for the government to handle.
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.