For years, families of people arbitrarily arrested and detained in a military barracks in Maiduguri have been exploited by security agents and lawyers who claim they can get their loved ones released. Now, calls coming from detainees suggest there is a new opportunity for them to bribe their way out.
From dozens of countries around the world, members of a violent independence movement are meeting weekly and raising thousands of dollars to fund a war back home.
Boko Haram terrorists are invading an IDP camp at the heart of Borno state in northeastern Nigeria and abducting displaced people, who usually have to sell most of their assets or borrow money to raise huge ransoms. Some of the victims have now relocated someplace else where they feel safer.
Since Nigeria’s civil war ended decades ago, many groups have continued to advocate for the secession of a Biafran Republic. Today, IPOB is the loudest voice. That title, however, used to belong to another group – MASSOB – which implemented a similar playbook. We go back in time to reconstruct the rise and fall of this organisation.
The terrorists took extreme measures to keep them in their ancestral communities; the soldiers took extreme — even unlawful — measures to push them out.
Political parties are exploiting abject poverty among Nigeria’s internally displaced people to serve their interests during elections.
To escape starvation, IDPs in Nigeria turn to farmlands in areas within the grasp of terrorists. To escape terrorism, they turn to their townsfolk.
Hundreds of buildings. They used to be shelters for people fleeing the violence in their home communities. They are now shells of memories and, without urgent action, risk becoming even more wretched.
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.
Some 25,000 are missing, many believed to be victims of extrajudicial killings and clandestine mass burials by the army.