IDPs in endless flight from Boko Haram
A family in flightCatechist Joseph Inuwa of Madagali in Adamawa state became a wandering man on 23rd August 2014, when Boko Haram fighters dislodged him and several other residents, and annexed the town to form part of their ‘caliphate’.His life had been stable and he had a church, a growing congregation, and a large family […]
A family in flight
Catechist Joseph Inuwa of Madagali in Adamawa state became a wandering man on 23rd August 2014, when Boko Haram fighters dislodged him and several other residents, and annexed the town to form part of their ‘caliphate’.
His life had been stable and he had a church, a growing congregation, and a large family before the attack.
Along with other families, Inuwa fled to Cameroon with his wife and 11 children.
“We settled in Amagbas and Amakshe in Cameroon. The people there received us,” he said. The Catechist who now lives in an uncompleted building in Jimeta, Adamawa state with his family, he said in Hausa. “We were staying there. They gave us food and drink.”
Even with the hospitality in their new home life wasn’t easy. Things were expensive. A tablet of pain killer like Paracetamol was sold for twenty naira, and body lotion that would ordinarily go for fifty naira, was sold for a hundred and fifty. As he talked about their experience, waving his copy of the Bible like a practiced preacher, members of his family threw in one or two words to paint a vivid picture of their lives in Cameroon.
Boko Haram: Refugees in endless flight
The fact that Inuwa and other displaced persons, whose numbers he put at several thousands, didn’t have a source of income, compounded their problem. Still they trudged on with life.
This changed on the 18th of January 2015 when residents of Amagbas and Amakshe in Cameroon, started hearing gunshots by 5.00 am, Boko Haram had launched a morning raid on the border town in which they were staying.
The displaced persons ran for their dear lives. Later in the day they left the mountains where they were hiding when the gunshots died down, Cameroonian soldiers had attacked the insurgents.
“By 11.30 am, we noticed that the gunshots had stopped. Soldiers from Libam had attacked them,” the catechist said. “Then we came back and decided to pack our belongings and leave Cameroon.”
After making it to Jimeta and not finding accommodation in the Displaced Persons Camp at Eklisyan ‘Yan Uwa a Najeriya (EYN) church in Jimeta, the Inuwas and other families who escaped the attack, settled in an completed building overgrown with wild grass.
They cut the grass, swept the red earth that had gathered there, and blocked its windows with sacks and stones. Dressed in print fabric known as atamfa in the north, Catechist Joseph Inuwa said if the owner of the house, whom they do not know asked them to leave, they would look for somewhere else to stay.
Maria Joseph, his daughter, who had been in Primary 6 before the Boko Haram insurgents struck Madagali, said she hopes to become a Reverend Sister.
They killed my husband
Hopes of a fruitful marital life were shattered for Fati and Jibrin. The couple lived in Gulak, Adamawa state. The soft-spoken widow spoke of the day her husband was murdered.
“The day the Boko Haram fighters entered (Gulak) he was in the house. They ordered him out. I also went out, but they said ‘go back.’ As I went back, I heard a gunshot. The shot was fired at him. As I went out again they threw his body before the house. His name was Jibrin.
“They didn’t leave us in Gulak. We sneaked out because they had said they wanted to marry us. So, we left in the evening.”
Staying with other displaced persons from Gulak at the Nigeria Labour Congress Displaced Persons’ Camp in Jimeta, Fati now fends for the son she had with her late husband, with donations from relations and what she makes from her moin-moin business.
Bintu Ali was lucky as her husband had escaped along with some other men when the insurgents raided Gulak. So, she fled Gulak with a six month old pregnancy, along with other women. She corroborated Fati’s story.
“When they came, we started running and our husbands and our children were running. We(the women ) came back thinking that they would just pass through the town as they had done in the past. We stayed in the town for one week. But we were staying indoors. As such we couldn’t see them (the Boko Haram fighters).
One day we decided to leave after dusk with our children.”
After about three days they made it to Jimeta, where they have been residing for about four months now.
Now that she has been delivered of a child, the only thing Bintu wants is to return home. This is all the people in the camp are yearning for. But home is in the hands of Boko Haram. The Nigerian government hasn’t said when it will get it back.
This article was written before the recent successes of the Multinational Joint Task Force in the North East.