The abundance at a camp for former Boko Haram members contrasts sharply with the extreme poverty and hunger widespread among internally displaced people in North East Nigeria.
After over a decade of waging war in the name of religion, Abubakar* has (apparently) dropped his gun and thirst for blood. He joined the terror group Boko Haram as a teenager and has known only violence his adult life, but now he wishes to settle for a quiet life of trading with his wife and child. He is shocked by how well the Nigerian authorities have treated him, he says. At the transit rehabilitation centre known as Hajj Camp in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, he gets a roof over his head, a mattress to lay on at night, a monthly cash allowance, and enough foodstuff for him and his family. The food supply is so generous that sometimes when they cook, they eat to their fill and leave remains. They then gather the leftovers, spread them in the sun to dry, and a day or two later sell them to someone who collects similar items from other former terrorists at the camp. Abubakar imagines that this material ends up with a farmer who will feed it to his livestock to fatten them.
He is wrong.
It ends up in the hands, pots, and bellies of internally displaced people who cannot afford anything more decent — the same people who were at the receiving end of Abubakar’s gun and thirst for blood.
For the first time since the Boko Haram crisis erupted in northeastern Nigeria over a decade ago, some events are taking place on such enormous scales. This is especially true of two things: the mass surrenders of insurgents who have been absorbed into a reintegration programme and the mass resettlement of internally displaced people from Maiduguri to their ancestral communities in other parts of the region. Interviews with the beneficiaries of both programmes, however, betray a disparity in how the government implements them.
On the one hand, the state authorities are cutting off access to humanitarian aid for IDPs to force them to fend for themselves, even though the widespread operations of terrorists render such efforts life-threatening. On the other hand, more resources are invested in rehabilitating former terrorists with the expectation that this would bring a quicker end to the conflict. Many observers believe such a paradoxical arrangement could fuel grievances and obstruct the path to peaceful coexistence in the future.
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