To escape starvation, IDPs in Nigeria turn to farmlands in areas within the grasp of terrorists. To escape terrorism, they turn to their townsfolk.
How do you get ransom from a person who has nothing?
One, you kidnap many people at once. Two, you don’t ask for too much. Three, you hope the abduction is gobbled up by headlines so that people in the government, out of embarrassment, or philanthropists, out of pity, donate to the victims’ families, who then use this to secure their freedom. If that doesn’t happen, you can count on the power of community: the families may not have any money either, but their townspeople should definitely come to their aid.
This is the formula now adopted by terrorists in Borno, northeastern Nigeria. Their victims are usually people displaced by the protracted Boko Haram insurgency in the region. Many of them are people whose displacement camps were recently shut down by the state authorities. The government moved them out of the capital city of Maiduguri to sites in other local government areas. They have stopped receiving regular humanitarian aid and are forced to fend for themselves. Since the only livelihood many of them know is tied to agriculture, they look to farmlands for sustenance. But available farmlands are only abundant in remote areas, and remote areas are to Boko Haram terrorists what cracks are to lizards.
Terrorists suspected to be members of the Boko Haram faction known as Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’adati wal-Jihad (JAS) stalk IDPs as they cross into the woods, seeing them as easy targets. They then abduct them and demand ransoms per head that can be raised within a few days.
Many of these abductions go unreported in mainstream media. But in August 2023, one drew the attention of both local and international outlets. Boko Haram terrorists kidnapped 48 women who had gone in search of sustenance in the Jere area of Borno.
HumAngle spoke to five of the victims whose experiences reflect the impossible situation IDPs in the state currently face.
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