90 minutes in IDP camp

Have you ever said hello to misery? Have you trodden paths laced with want and tears and death? If you haven’t, I invite you to any of the Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDP) camps in Nigeria. They are spread around many states, but the one I was privileged to visit is located right behind the posh […]

Have you ever said hello to misery? Have you trodden paths laced with want and tears and death? If you haven’t, I invite you to any of the Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDP) camps in Nigeria. They are spread around many states, but the one I was privileged to visit is located right behind the posh Games Village residential estate in Abuja.
It is difficult to be surrounded by so much misery and not be affected by it. But the cheerfulness of the people rather brightened the gloom, except that it stabbed the visitor’s conscience in vicarious guilt for standing akimbo while fellow citizens lived like Early Man.
It was Rev. Fr. David Kiprono Cheruiyot, a Kenyan priest who pastors the Catholic church in Games Village, who invited me to accompany him to see the work he was doing in one small place tucked away behind Games Village.
That visit afforded me the opportunity of knowing the depth of the work that still has to be done after we have rid our country of Boko Haram terrorists. It turned out that the IDP was as big as any village I’ve ever seen, except that poverty and raggedness scream at you as soon as you walk in.
Going around with our guide and camp coordinator, Emmanuel, we moved from shack to shack with men and women milling around; women grinding millet; some washing threadbare clothes; kids under a tent learning ABC; residents coming out of the bushes where they had gone to answer nature’s call; young men doing subsistence farming in one section of the bush; boys lounging under a tree within a ‘red light’ district where girls in scanty rags sold their wares; children suckling while their mums lay forlornly on mats spread on the bare floor; pit latrines already filled to the brim because of the high population of users – and yet everyone greeted us cheerfully as we passed by.
One child rolled a small worn-out wheelbarrow tyre towards us and greeted cheerfully. His mum stared with cheerful sadness in front of their shack.
Are these people capable of feeling pain anymore? I remembered Ricky Martin’s rumination immediately: “Pain comes, it seduces you, it plays with you, and you identify with it to the point that you begin to believe this is how life is….”
Most of the shacks are constructed with sticks cut from the bush over which jute materials, plastic sheets, blankets or, in few cases corrugated iron sheets, are nailed to give some ‘privacy’. In the midst of all these, children are being born, people are falling ill by the minute without any medical facility whatsoever. Thanks to reverend sisters from the Medical Missionaries of Mary (MMM), succour comes now and again.
Fr. Cheruiyot himself has already built many pit latrines which we visited; so has the Australian government through an NGO. More are under construction. He was at home among the people, chatting with them in Hausa language and generally giving them a shoulder to lean on. But the sheer volume of what still has to be done to make the place minimally habitable is daunting. I was privileged to meet Victoria, a woman with gratitude written all over her face, who only recently survived a ruptured appendix -thanks to the quick intervention of the Catholic missionaries.
And thanks to the Danjuma Foundation, there is an ongoing skill acquisition programme which keeps some of the young elements busy. The situation in other IDP camps all over the country may not be much different from the one I have described above. You’d think you were in some camp in Ethiopia or Somalia.
Nigeria has the highest number of IDPs, about four million people, in Africa. What are we all doing about it?
I commend John Coltrane’s words to us all: “I want to be a force for real good. In other words. I know that there are bad forces, forces that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good”. Any takers out there?
Between sexcapades & masquerades
I was mortified by the serious allegations of sexual misconduct and attempted rape made by the United States government against three Nigerian lawmakers – Samuel Ikon (PDP, Akwa Ibom), Mohammed Gololo (APC, Bauchi) and Mark Gbillah (APC, Benue). The petition says they attempted to commit rape, and solicited sex from prostitutes during their recent trip to the US. Mr. Gololo was alleged by a hotel house keeper to have grabbed her and sought sex. Messrs Ikon and Gbillah, allegedly, sought the assistance of hotel park attendants to help them get prostitutes.
Now, there’s so much noise all over the place. Speaker Dogara has asked the US government to provide proof. The legislators have denied any wrongdoing.
I wasn’t expecting them to own up but I want to warn that we should be careful. Does anyone seriously think that the US authorities have not investigated the allegations before writing?
I think the US government should take the gentlemen up on their request for full exposure and make their findings public. Mark my prediction: If such a situation ever crops up in future, the concerned Rep will be arrested, investigated and prosecuted. The Americans won’t go through the finesse of diplomatic correspondence anymore.
And from Osun comes the sad news that students now wear the religious garb of their respective faiths to school following the approval of the use of the Muslim Hijab by a judge. Where are we leading this country to? Not to be outdone, I hear that masquerades and gnomes have now insisted on wearing their costumes to school. I see some spiritual Star Wars in the offing.
While Europe and America are going to the moon and planning for the next 100 years, we are regressing back into the womb of prehistory. Sad for Osun. Sad for Nigeria.