How teacher who argued with Boko Haram copes with life on an IDP camp

A brush with Boko Haram is unpredictable, but Idris Ibrahim Halilu is living to tell his tale on a camp for displaced people in Abuja. He’s now more than 850km from Maiduguri where he had his brush with the terrorist group while it was in its budding years. Now 62, his safety is among more […]

A brush with Boko Haram is unpredictable, but Idris Ibrahim Halilu is living to tell his tale on a camp for displaced people in Abuja.

He’s now more than 850km from Maiduguri where he had his brush with the terrorist group while it was in its budding years.

Now 62, his safety is among more than 2,200 people of Bama and Gwoza origin displaced by insurgency in their home town.

On camp, he works as coordinator in charge of government and public affairs, a sort of “go-between for government and private sector as regards the IDPs and our plight,” he explains.

But before that, it was his work as a teacher and producer for NTA in Kaduna that brought him in close contact with BH, as he prefers to call it.

In 2005, Halilu retired from a public relations job with a freight forwarding company in Lagos to return home “to relax,” he says.

Relationship not suitable for print

“Already the insurgency had started. I recall back to 2002, it was coming when the Taliban reared its ugly head. That was the regime of [former president Olusegun] Obasanjo.”

The young men easily lured to Boko Haram sought out the elderly teacher in their community to debate the precepts of the insurgency, of Boko Haram and of their thirst to get converts.

“I was wondering why somebody would call himself or be accept to be called a BH,” says Halilu.

“By definition, Boko Haram means the whole western knowledge is forbidden. And I can’t see any sense in that. I started to wonder. Actually my relationship with some of them brought about my displacement.”

The more he debated with the young men, the fiercer the opposition. When Boko Haram began serious and open confrontation, whoever knew them was a risk.

“I used to debate with them. When they say, ‘baba, why don’t you join? I say, tell me, anything new about Islam, anything new in the Quran, the Hadith, what can be added to it?’

“The boko haram, I don’t understand it because the media, the book you use is boko. In fact, one or two of them were my students, I was teaching them western education too. So I can’t understand.”

Halilu recalls escorting some as they took food to their mates behind bars. In 2010, many in prison got freedom, while the state government hoped for dialogue. But that wasn’t to be.

“People like us who had been chatting with them had to find our way. Already, Dr Ja’afar [Mahmud Adam] had been killed. People like us who are of age are now all over the place.  Up till now we are still battling insurgency,” says Halilu.

Adam is reported to have trained Boko Haram founder Mohammed Yusuf and both preached in Maiduguri’s Indimi mosque, attended by the deputy governor. Both men parted ways between 2002 and 2004, and Adam was shot dead in a Kano mosque in 2007.

Displaced on two fronts

Halilu saw his family rent apart over an incident he blames on polygamy. That was his first displacement, a social one. His second displacement was when Boko Haram actively began its campaign of killing.

“When they started killing, they were searching for people like me who had known them and was questioning them. To run home, already there was another problem at home. I felt displaced from two fronts and had to escape to Abuja,” Halilu says.

The date 3/3/2011 is stamped in Halilu’s memory. His bus took a stop at Suleja and a bomb explosion was reported at INEC office in the town. Boko Haram claimed responsibility. Since then, Boko Haram hasn’t lulled and Halilu’s life hasn’t changed.

Getting help

With his education, he can get on the street and “solicit for assistance from those whose hearts God has touched and explain my predicament. They assist.” His words are precise, his voice has the lure of an orator’s

But not many internally displaced people sharing his camp can speak Hausa, much less English. And there is a growing sense that their government has forgotten them, he says.

The camp is called Monkey Village, at Area One in central Abuja. It occupies a plot belonging to the Federal Inland Revenue Service.

“Even their school, we are occupying it. It is our best friend in Abuja. In fact, it is one of the government agencies which made us to believe that there is even government. If not for it and sometimes NEMA—NEMA comes maybe twice in a year.

Cut off from family and unsure their whereabouts, Halilu only hopes on handouts from government and nongovernment organisations visiting the camp. Food items stocked inside a booth donated by the South African embassy grew around Easter this year, but sharing it out must be delayed for at least two week to ensure enough food is available. The uncertainty is mind crippling, and nothing is looking to change, he says.

“Psychologically, socially, all the IDPs are one in predicament: insurgency operations. Up till now I have not seen any effort by the federal administration—whether Goodluck or Buhari—that has come forward to embrace the IDPs, to see what they can tap from what the IDPs know about the insurgency—his ideas about insurgency, his views about it, how it came about, how he saw it coming, how it approached, how it overtook him, how it is today.

“If there is a re-enactment of this insurgency in this country, the blame will fall on those leading this country today. Nobody will escape it. We were caught pants down. People ought to have foreseen Boko Haram.

That no one did is Halilu’s conclusion. Also unknown is where his next meal comes from.

It past noon as stood on an empty stretch of road to be interviewed. He hadn’t had breakfast and he doesn’t know where lunch will come from. The day before, he had breakfast and lunch but no dinner, because he didn’t have the money.

“If not for your coming today, normally as a human being—[looks to the side at two young mechanics working in the area] these are my children. I come to them and say, give me food. They give me.

“They know me, I identify with them, they identify with our yearnings and aspirations and our plight. So the Muslims are there, the Christians are there, the good ones. Not nominal Christians or Muslims who are indifferent to human suffering,” he says.