ATTAHIRU AHMED reports that local communities and displaced people in Zamfara State are living in a state of fear and general insecurity given the constant raids by bandits, just as the women are subjected to series of sexual molestation.
When the Boko Haram insurgency started, nobody could have envisaged the extent of the multi-dimensional crises that Nigeria currently has to deal with. Suffice to say that the problem had become a regional and international one, and requiring help from global agencies.
As of today, there are currently well over two million Internally Displaced Persons being accommodated in 13 camps across the country. Statistics show that more than half of them (56 per cent) are children. Apart from children, the other vulnerable group includes women and girls who have become victims of serial rape, sexual exploitation and abuse and false promises of marriage, among others.
In 2017, a group of local and international aid providers, the Borno State Protection Sector Working Group reported that sexual exploitation, rape and other sexual abuse are major concerns all over the IDP camps in the country. Reports also indicated that government officials are the major culprits.
It was also reported that between 2013 and 2017, about 13,000 babies were born in the IDP camps in the country, many of them by-products of rape and sexual exploitation of vulnerable women and girls.
The Boko Haram insurgency is not the only purveyor of displacement of human beings and their subsequent accommodation in IDP camps in Nigeria. In the North-West part of the country, banditry and kidnapping have equally displaced hundreds of thousands of the local populace from their villages, thus disrupting their lifestyle and survival.
The problem in Zamfara
Zamfara State is one of the states in the North-West having its own fair share of the crisis and having to accommodate the displaced people in camps.
Zamfara State, hitherto regarded as the most peaceful state in the federation has, however, in the last eight years been embroiled in a permanent crisis as a result of armed banditry, cattle rustling, as well as rampant cases of kidnappings. Thousands of lives had been lost, while a large number of livestock had equally been carted away.
Many houses had also been burnt down during raids by the bandits leading to displacement of several thousands of local inhabitants. Those who had managed to remain in their villages currently live in fear of further attacks and death.
Worst hit local government areas in the state by the menace are Maru, Maradun, Zurmi,
Gusau, Bakura and Anka, while all the remaining local governments, with the exception of Gummi, have at one time of the other recorded several deadly attacks by the bandits.
Life in the camps
In Zamfara State, 184,000 households are displaced in the state, among whom are 600,000 people mostly women and children. The IDP camp at Kotorkoshi area of Bungudu Local Government Area of the state, there are over 2000 displaced persons.
In some of the other local government areas, IDPs are currently occupying entire rows of classrooms, apparently without a clue about what to do next with their lives which seem to have veered off its natural course. Some of the classrooms are leaking, often getting the occupants drenched anytime there was rainfall.
Before now, apart from public primary schools serving as accommodation for the IDPs, the displaced persons also occupied government buildings and other uncompleted structures. Some of them had arrived at the camps with their domestic animals such as cows and goats, with the hope of starting a new beginning.
In an interview recently with Sunday Tribune, an IDP who identified himself as Adamu Abdullahi, said the bandits placed a levy of N20 million on five villages which must be paid to avoid attacks.
“The armed bandits sent a representative to our communities asking us to pay certain amount of money running into millions of naira as precondition for living in peace. Our village and other neighbouring communities were among the villages visited.
“I was part of the team that took the levy on our village to the bandits inside a forest. We had to mobilise ourselves to go from house to house collecting money in order to meet the demand. Failure to do so would be very calamitous on us,” he lamented.
Another resident from another community, Gidan Baushe, told Sunday Tribune that the armed bandits had earlier killed his son and younger brother while they were working on their farms.
“We were not sleeping in our houses (any longer). We (had) left our homes and went to forests and farms. Some of us were sleeping on rocks and trees in order to avoid attacks.
“No one is left at my community; the whole village had been deserted. Not even a chicken could be found there. They looted our houses and shops looking for food and fuel for their motorbikes,” he lamented.
Aminu Musa, also a victim of armed bandits told Sunday Tribune that he had to carry his children on his shoulders and trekked for about 20km with his pregnant wife to escape from bandits’ attacks. After a long trek, they were lucky to have found a donkey which carried his wife the rest of the way.
Stories of rape also abound. According to a married young girl, she was raped by an armed bandit after abducting her and another woman, taking both into a forest in the night.
“We were sleeping in our mother-in-law’s room when they (bandits) broke into our rooms one night and asked us to go with them. Our mother-in-law pleaded with them to spare us but they threatened to kill us if we resisted them any longer.
“As a result, our mother-in-law gave up, thinking that the armed men were kidnapping us for ransom. So we went with them and beside me was another woman.
“As we are trekking into the forest I kept on pleading with them to spare us but we were ignored until when we reached a rock near a river. That was around midnight. One of them asked me to go with him under a tree. I shed tears, screamed for help but all to avail until he raped me.
“Later, they said we should find our way back home and tell my husband who was at a goldmine in Anka Local Government Area that they had shared his wife with him. We arrived home around 5 a.m and found out that our mother in-law had fallen sick because of the shock of what had happened to us,” she narrated.
Another nursing mother said she was seven months pregnant at the time bandits attacked her family, but that did not stop them from raping her after her husband was taken outside the house and tied down.
“I later fell ill and prematurely gave birth to a baby girl. My husband left home and has not returned up till now. I don’t actually know his whereabouts, neither do his brothers,” she said.
Abubakar Sabon Gari is the village head of Gidan Dawa. Narrating the experience of his people at the hands of the bandits he said three young girls were recently abducted by the criminals. He added that one of the girls was later released after being gang raped. The girl was admitted into a hospital for one week and later discharged.
Though the government of Governor Bello Mohammed Matawalle is doing its best to cushion the residents and IDPs from constant attacks from bandits, the enormous impact of the crisis would require more than local efforts, and the effects would take a while before they could be totally forgotten.
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