The environment is unkempt, while living condition is not encouraging. Facilities in the camp are inadequate and overcrowded.

Despite efforts of Borno State government to add value to the lives of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), Head Defence and Security, ODITA SUNDAY, who was in Maiduguri recently, writes that life is still gloomy to survivors of terrorists’ attacks, as lack of food and medicare still persist.

I Will Never Forget The Day I Ran Almost Naked – Terrorist Survivor
I Was Married To Three Men – Lydia, Rescued Chibok Girl

The environment is unkempt, while living condition is not encouraging. Facilities in the camp are inadequate and overcrowded. There are children and even elderly sleeping under thatched roof that could be blown off when heavy rains come. Some others live under shelters made of wooden sticks and pieces of ripped fabric. These improvised shelters provide no protection against wind or rain and offer almost no privacy or security. Many don’t even have a door, leaving women, men and children vulnerable to attacks and threats.

Although, Nigerian military are on guard of the areas almost 24 hours a day, they risk becoming sick with malaria, diarrhea or typhoid, as the rains draw near. The affected IDPs are mostly families with children.

Fourteen years after insurgency in the Northeast began; shortage of food and non-availability of medicare and others have continued to confront them. The need for hospitals and more food is immediate, as some of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) told The Guardian that their major challenge is food and medicare.

A survivor, Hajia Fatima Abdullahi, one of the displaced persons in the IDP camp, painting a gory picture of the pain she and her family had gone through since Boko Haram invasion of their community, said: “We have lost over 100 family members, friends and neighbours.”

Abdullahi, who is waiting for peace to finally return to the state so that they can finally go back to their ancestral homes, revealed that so many of her family members are still being held hostage by these terrorists.

“My cousins are still being held in the bushes. Life is so meaningless to me after what we went through in life. The fear is still in me. The day I will never forget was the day I almost went naked, with only pants on me,” Abdullahi revealed.

Narrating what she and her community went through at the peak of Boko Haram rampage, the middle-aged woman, who spoke in Hausa, said she is still traumatised by the terrific happenings in her village when they were attacked.

“A particular incident that made me shed tears profusely was when we trekked from Dorunbaga to Monguno for two days without food in the bush. I lost over 100 neighbours and friends. Some were killed, some are still abducted.

“Though government has done a lot, there is food shortage in this camp. Government has provided mosque to pray and power supply for us, but we lack medicare, we lack a clinic to take our children when they are sick. Food has been another issue; most of us are really hungry,” Abdullahi said.

To confirm Abdullahi’s statement, when the newsmen who visited the camp contributed some money and presented to the women, the joy in their faces was contagious. The way they rushed a few fruit juice packs that were shared to them by the journalists sent goose bumps to this reporter.

At Muna, Borno State IDP camp, some of the elders who spoke to newsmen lauded the military for giving them respite. One of them, who belonged to Truck Owners Association, noted that they have lost it all to these terrorists.

According to him, “few years ago, in 2019, you dare not stand where we are now. This particular ground was a battle ground. Child suicide bombers could strike at anytime. We lived in perpetual fear and we lost so many of our family members.

“Some of us in truck business were doing business with over N30 million, some N20 million. But no one among us now has any penny. We lost them all to terrorism. We live from hand-to-mouth now.”

In 2018, the military organised a private burial for dozens of officers and soldiers killed during terrorist attacks on Nigerian Army 157 Task Force Battalion. The graves where soldiers who paid the supreme price were laid were countless.

A visit to Maimalari Military Cemetery in outskirts of Maiduguri, one of those cemeteries where soldiers who died in the frontline were buried, revealed that some of the soldiers could not be identified by their names as bombs dismembered their bodies and could not be recognised for proper identification.

One of the hostaged Chibok girls, Lydia Simon, who was rescued with her three children by troops of Operation Desert Sanity III, North East Operation Hadin Kai swore never to encounter those who were her three husbands in the forest.

She was rescued along with her three children by the troops of 82 Division Task Force Battalion in Ngoza Council, on Wednesday April 17, 2024.

Lydia, with serial number 68 among the abducted missing girls escaped from the camp of Ali Ngulde in Mandara Mountain, where she was held in captivity for several years. She surrendered to troops of 82 Division Task Force Battalion at Ngoshe in Gwoza Council. The rescued Chibok girl is five months pregnant and claimed she was from Pemi Town in Chibok.

Lydia and her three children who were in tatters when they were intercepted by troops were cleaned up and given new clothes and footwear by the instruction of the theatre commander, Major General Waidi Shaibu.

They are currently under the care of the officers and men of the Operation Hadin Kai headquarters, Maiduguri, where she is being given medicare, counselling and rehabilitation with her children.

Narrating her ordeal in the mountains and how she summoned the courage to escape in Hausa language, Lydia said: “It was a life of pains and misery, so, I could not bear it anymore. I visited the house of my sister nearby in the mountains, and some women were going to bush to get firewood, so I followed them. I saw a certain route which I believed would lead me to town, so that was how I escaped.

“When I escaped and started roaming in the bush, then I met soldiers, who assisted and rescued me and brought me here.

“The soldiers were very nice to me and my children. I and my three kids are being taken care of very well, we are eating nice food, they bought us clothes. We don’t have any problem here.”

She spoke on their abduction: “When Boko Haram abducted us from our school, they married us to their members, mostly fighters, I married three times, my first husband was killed by the military, another one married me, he too was killed as well, and the third one married me, I have three kids with each of them.”

Reacting to questions on whether she would like to go back to her husband, she simply said, “God forbid.”

A visit to Konduga, a former hotbed of terrorists revealed that a lot of work by military to sanitise the area is still ongoing.

Terrorists in that area resorted to planting Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s) along the expressway at night times. The military along that axis are often sleepless as they painstakingly scan the roads to neutralise those explosives before the roads are declared safe for road users to travel by.

“We do a lot of scanning of the roads. Our work begins from 6.00pm to 6.00am. We don’t sleep because those terrorists come out at nights to do those things. We are constantly after them at night time. Early, morning, our soldiers would scan the roads before they are declared fit to travel by,” a senior officer hinted.

Some of the repentant militants who spoke with The Guardian are working hard to earn forgiveness from the government, as they often help to engage the terrorists at the battle front and also provide soldiers with intelligence on their modus operandi.

According to one of them, “God has delivered us, we will never go back. We are now trying our best to earn forgiveness from the military.”

The Battalion commander of 222 Battalion in Konduga, Lt. Colonel JC Mohammed urged visiting newsmen not to be frightened at the sound of gun fire as the terrorists are still being engaged from time to time. The commander and his battalion engage often in non-kinetic activities of providing food, medicines and other welfare packages for the IDPs in Konduga.