For more than a decade now, the number of Nigerians displaced by insurgency, banditry, communal clashes, and farmer-herder conflict has been increasing at an alarming rate. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), there were 2.9 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Nigeria at the end of August 2021. And these excludes many of our citizens taking refuge in Niger Republic, Cameroon, and Chad. Nigeria is also home to over 73,000 refugees and asylum-seekers mostly from Cameroon.

Despite the humongous amount of resources being expended by government, multilateral and local aid agencies as well as the international community, the growing populations of displaced persons across the country lack the basic necessities of life. By diverting scarce resources meant for the most vulnerable of our people, lives are being made increasingly difficult for them. Hunger walks naked in most of the IDPs camps, medicare is in short supply even as shelter, clothing and water remain essential commodities. With the maimed, the orphans, the widows, widowers, and the tides of refugees in camps practically left to their own devices, we are unwittingly creating other social problems that could come back to haunt the nation my years down the line.

By international conventions and protocols, Nigeria is obligated to protect and assist these Persons of Concern (PoC). Unfortunately, Nigerian IDPs and refugees suffer from deplorable conditions marked by hunger, poor healthcare, lack of water and good sanitation, squalid environments, and access to education. A recent report by Umaru Gola, Chairman of the Durumi IDP camp at Garki, Abuja, alleged that the camp alone buries at least one of its members every week; and they die mostly from hunger and both preventable and curable diseases. “Everybody has been left to face his or her fate”, said Gola. He said they draw support mostly from religious bodies, NGOs, and kind-spirited Nigerians.

If the IDPs in the nation’s capital are in this state of abandonment, what then will be the fate of the rest in over 250 IDP camps and host communities? Worse still, allegations of misappropriation of funds, flagrant breach of procurement process, incompetence, and abuse of power, are rife. There are also reports of withholding logistics, such vehicles donated by the UNHCR for field operations, while some refugees from the Central African Republic (CAR) were forced to risk travelling the bandits-prone Kano-Kaduna-Abuja road for their documentation, which could have been done in Kano.

Nigerians and the world expect something better from such a strategic humanitarian agency both in the appointment of its leadership, its governance, and supervision by the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development. As a result of mass displacements, many children are holed up with their parents in internally displaced camps with limited schooling at most – and with no textbooks and teaching aids. A generation of children are being deliberately robbed of the right to education, and by extension, their future. And as it stands, the cycle of poverty is being perpetuated.

Since a civilisation is measured by how well it treats its weakest members, we call on President Muhammadu Buhari to take decisive actions to ameliorate the sufferings of IDPs. As a matter of urgency, the government needs to ensure protection, provision of food, water and sanitation, healthcare, skill acquisition, and education. The federal government must also ensure that resources meant for soothing the pains of the displaced are not misappropriated by some greedy officials.

In 2017, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said Nigeria was facing “the biggest humanitarian crisis in Africa today.” That, sadly, remains the situation, even today!