IDP Camps or IDP Prisons? PMB, Please Act Now.

This afternoon, I listened to the VOA Hausa Service 4.30pm broadcast in which it featured the pathetic condition of our IDPs in their Borno State camps. Earlier in the day, I listened to Dr. Jibrin Ibrahim also painting a similarly unattractive picture of the situation on the BBC. Practically, these brothers and sisters of ours there are living under subhuman conditions of hunger, congestion, imprisonment and social breakdown.

This is not hearsay. The VOA aired voices of resident IDPs in the camps who gave graphic details of how they eat belated meals only once or twice a day, how often they are given just a measure (mudu) of corn flour (garin masara) - which they cannot utilize in absence of firewood and ingredients - as dinner for several members of their rooms, how they are kept under illegal arrest and denied exit into the town by soldiers who beat men and women that attempts any exit, how they are cramped up to forty persons a room, how their daughters are getting impregnated daily, etc.

The IDPs complained of being abandoned after the last elections, before which they were served sumptuous meals during the campaigns by the state government.

It is a very sad story of neglect by all the three tiers of government. Though they did not spare NEMA, the IDPs laid most of their blame on the Borno State Government and their Local Government Councils which failed in their responsibility to supply the necessary perishables food items (kayan cefane) even when the federal government supplied grains.

The IDPs in the interviews have pitched their hope with the President. He needs to urgently look into their predicament not only in the area of feeding but how they are imprisoned and molested by his soldiers daily.

The President needs to take this issue seriously. He must urgently look into their complaints and get the relevant authorities and stakeholders map out - and agree on - an efficient way of caring for these innocent and helpless souls. They are not beggars but victims of government corruption and ineptitude that precipitated the Boko Haram crisis in the first place.

Also, as part of the solution, the early return of the IDPs to their homes must be looked into urgently, as they suggested repeatedly. Without any assitance, they can cater for themselves once at home. "Once at home, we will live in our thatched tents, fish daily and feed ourselves without any assistance," said one of them, grudgingly.

The suffering of these IDPs is a shameful narrative on the state of governance in a leading African economy. And when it happens under a government whose hallmark is fight against corruption, it becomes scandalous. As the IDPs said, their brethren refugees in Cameroon are under more caring hands. Meals and living conditions are not their issue there. Their only worry is the home they miss, said one of the IDPs.

It is time for the President to overhaul the board membership of various FG parastatals. I often wonder how muchhe will achieve with Jonathan's men still occupying those board rooms. Also, he should make sure that state governments do not enjoy the allowance for corruption they enjoyed under previous Presidents.

So far, that room remains wide open. Prevention is the best way to fight corruption. Prosecution is its last resort. In many states, there are already rising piles of corruption scandals against their governments. That is why the state governments do their best to build very thick walls against any outsider going to find out living conditions in the IDP camps.

Let us call a spade a spade. Corruption is behind the humanitarian condition in most of the IDPs in the Northeast. Let us fight it there too.

Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde
27 January 2016