Births, more births but no succour for IDPs in Kishi Tsoro

Thousands of internally displaced persons from Benue and Nasarawa states have taken refuge in Oyo State where their numbers have increased due to child births. Apart from food and means of living, one of the IDPs’ major challenge is family planning interventions, as Daily Trust finds out. Children! Those are what a first time or […]

Thousands of internally displaced persons from Benue and Nasarawa states have taken refuge in Oyo State where their numbers have increased due to child births. Apart from food and means of living, one of the IDPs’ major challenge is family planning interventions, as Daily Trust finds out.

Children! Those are what a first time or everyday visitor notices as soon as one steps into the Kishi Tsoro IDP camp, a border community with Benin Republic in Oyo State.

The residents here are mostly displaced from Benue and Nasarawa states.

A visit to this camp by a group of journalists initiated by Paged Initiative revealed that these displaced persons, coming from states with low life expectancy and high maternal and child mortality, are now contending with family planning challenges.

Every female in this IDP community had a child she was caring for or breastfeeding. Watching a young mother of about 23 years breastfeeding her six-month-old child and at the same time struggling with her two other children over a meal of corn flour gave a vivid description of the condition of living of these IDPs.

It was evident that women and young girls faced unwanted, unplanned, and in many cases poorly spaced pregnancies due to lack of access to contraceptives and to a large extent counselling. This is also true of elderly women in the camp.

It will also be interesting to note that some of the women face immense pressure from their husbands and society to rebuild the population lost in the conflict.

Vicky Bala, 55, is one of these women and she is worried about the baby boom in the camps. She would love for contraceptives to be made available to the women to help them control conceptions.

When the farmers/herders clash affected her home, Vicky, a mother of 10 was among those displaced to Kishi Tsoro camp in Oyo State where she has lived for three years.

“We live in very poor conditions here, in torn tents with five out of my ten children. It is very tough,” she said.

But there is a cultural reason for her situation and this has left her frustrated. Of her ten births, nine are still alive. The youngest is eight-month-old.

“My frustration now is that at my age, I am still breast feeding an eight-month-old child. Is this not a disgrace? The insecurity and frequent fights between our people and herders put me in this trouble,” she said.

As to why she and her husband, also a displaced person, couldn’t plan their pregnancies, she said, “It’s considered a taboo if you are to refuse your man. As a woman, I have to attend to him when he calls but unfortunately, it resulted in a pregnancy.”

Back in her native Benue, before she was displaced, she used a combination of herbs and roots to help in family planning but on getting here such plants are not available.

“I will really appreciate if any hospital can come to our aid by providing us with family planning pills,” she said. “How can someone my age still be getting pregnant? The age difference between my last child and the one before him is nine years. It wasn’t easy having to go through the whole process of carrying a pregnancy and delivery again. My eldest child is 30-years old. He has a family of his own. I still go to farm to assist my husband and also look after the other children who are still with us, having to care for a much younger one isn’t easy for me at all. If only any of the family planning method is available it will be of great relief to me.”

Maternal mortality is one major problem Nigeria is still battling. Meeting its goals in this regard is something that many experts are not sure of when it comes to curbing this menace. Vicky Bala is one of the lucky women to have survived multiple births. But she admitted that the last one was very difficult.

Vicky says her last pregnancy wasn’t an easy one as they had no money or means to attend any hospital. But for the grace of Rev. Sylvester Odunrinde, a priest of the Catholic diocese of Oyo State, she feared her situation and those of other IDPS would have been more difficult.

“My legs were swollen to a point that I could hardly move during my last pregnancy, one day Father Odurinde saw me and insisted that I had to be taken to a hospital. I was taken to a hospital in Ogbomosho and was attended to as an emergency case. I was scanned to make sure the baby was fine. I had high blood pressure but it was treated immediately and I was given the necessary drugs.

“Father made sure I attended my antenatal sessions and paid for the transport. I gave birth in the hospital unlike before where I gave birth at home.”

Her husband had to do menial jobs to help pay the medical bills and the priest contributed as well.

Mother of three, Joanne, 23, said they had no access to hospital neither did they have means to access family planning methods, something she hoped they could be helped with.

“It’s not easy. My first child is just three years old, the second, a year and two months and the last is just six months old. I will really appreciate any family planning method now so I can plan my life and that of my children well. I don’t know what my life will be like if I become pregnant again,” she said.

Simon Akwue, popularly called Baba Simon, from whose name another settlement constituting displaced persons from Benue, Nasarawa and Kogi State, Ado Simon in Kishi, Oyo State was derived is still actively in the business of making babies.

Baba Simon, married to four wives, can only confirm that he has over 30 children. His youngest wife was seen nursing a baby of about four/five month-old.

With a smile, Baba Simon said he still hopes to get more wives.

His 27-year-old son Daniel, says his eldest sibling is about 40 years and married with children. Daniel is also married and so are many of his siblings.

When the question of family planning was posed, Daniel said, “They do not know anything about family planning. They keep giving birth here like chickens; 21, 22 children and it goes on. But for me I have resolved to have just one.”

Life in the camps isn’t rosy but according to camp coordinators, increasingly, questions on family planning are preoccupying the IDPs

“From time to time, mothers come to ask how they can have access to family planning methods without it affecting their health. Unfortunately, since we don’t have access to that ourselves as coordinators, providing such services here on camp will be a herculean task as most times social and cultural constrains restricts women from accessing these services. Most times I tell them to go to the health centre,” Sarah, a coordinator said.

These incessant farmers/herders clash not only forced people to seek shelter in the camps but also made them decide to go far away from home to seek succour, thereby making them abandon their initial source of livelihoods, which was majorly agriculture.

This crisis has robbed them of their means to support their families, leading to widespread food insecurity and eventually, malnutrition. IDPs have learned to adapt to their new lives to the best of their ability, despite challenges of living conditions inside the camps but for Madam Vicky and other women at Kishi Tsoro, it’s starting over from scratch to make sure they set their priorities right, with the appropriate family planning methods.