Jos Crisis: ‘Govt has abandoned children, widows’

It’s now one year after Jos crises. What role is your organisation playing to ease the plight of the victims especially widows and children?In 2008, it’s an unfortunate incident that had happened in Jos. It started politically and later turned into a religious issue. We looked at the best way to help, the victims because […]

It’s now one year after Jos crises. What role is your organisation playing to ease the plight of the victims especially widows and children?
In 2008, it’s an unfortunate incident that had happened in Jos. It started politically and later turned into a religious issue. We looked at the best way to help, the victims because the government was handicapped in so many ways. They tried to help but if the people in authority are of different religions, it makes it difficult to take the necessary action required because not all will accept their intervention.
Like, in Jos North, we identified 14 areas which  were affected. The situation was very pathetic because you will see teenage children and women roaming the streets. They didn’t know where their parents and husbands had gone to. Some  were chased out of their homes and the houses set ablaze. When we see such types of victims, we try to unite them with their families. We provide reliefs to the victims and there were insufficient housing for the victims. We worked in the areas where Christians were affected and about 1,647 Christian families were rendered homeless.
We discovered that over 500 shops were looted, burnt and vandalized. We registered them and we assisted shop owners to enable them continue in the businesses. We give them hope and calm them down in order to control the spread of the crisis. If not, these people will be angry and try to retaliate.
We also helped widows and their children. Some of them saw their husbands killed were still faced with the trauma. Some of the men were brutally killed, some were burnt alive and the image is still haunting them and made them incapacitated. You need to bring back these women to life again so that they will be able to take care of their children. We were able to register 103 persons. Thirty-five were widows whose husbands were killed. But there were many corpses registered elsewhere. There were corpses of unidentified people because they were burnt beyond recognition, and so many people reported that their people were missing, they don’t know where up till today.
What is the present condition of these victims, especially widows and orphans?
They were abandoned by the authorities and most of them were left to themselves without basic requirements for living. Every human being needs shelter, food, clothes and conveniences and these needs are continuous. They need a huge amount of money to rebuild the houses. How would a widow, whose husband was killed and left with children to take to school get the required money to rebuild their house? We went round to see if the government can help, but up to this moment what we received are promises. For the widows, we were able to helpto pay their house rents for one year. The one year agreement has lapsed and the problem is not yet over. So, we are still waiting for what the government can do for them. Even the issue of school fees, we must now struggle to pay for another year.
Now, there were a lot widows and children who don’t have a place to stay and the 1,647 affected victims that we discovered don’t have housing at the moment. Their children are not well kept. They are roaming the streets, some without schools and, if care is not taken, there is the fear that very soon these children will begin to learn bad manners and become a problem to the society.
Since government is silent on assistance, what options are left for you now?
We are still appealing to philanthropists to identify with the plight of the children, widows and other victims. They can pay the school fees of these children; they need to continue training in school.