New Kuchin Goro: Empty Life In Abuja’s Displaced Persons Camp

Because of a bad leg, Lazarus Fambia, 62, couldn’t flee into the bush when Boko Haram attacked his village of Gwoshe in the hills around Gwoza on the 4th of November, 2013. So he lay in a ditch the entire night, waiting, hoping and praying to God to spare his life while his relatives and […]

Because of a bad leg, Lazarus Fambia, 62, couldn’t flee into the bush when Boko Haram attacked his village of Gwoshe in the hills around Gwoza on the 4th of November, 2013. So he lay in a ditch the entire night, waiting, hoping and praying to God to spare his life while his relatives and neighbours were being killed in cold blood.
In the last eight months, he has been living in one of the hundreds of shacks that occupy the sprawling Internally Displaced Persons’ camp in the New Kuchin Goro village of Abuja, some 1000 kilometres from Gwoza. The shacks are small affairs, mostly the size of really small rooms made of wooden frames covered with discarded cement bags set in what was a farmland. Some of the shacks are bare; containing only mats spreads out on the dusty floors. Others have been turned into shops, selling drugs and other essentials. One of the shacks, covered with posters of Kannywood home videos, was powered by a little generator. Inside, DVDs of Hausa and Indian films were lined on the rough shelves.
Baba Fambia is at home here, sitting on a bench under a blue canopy that had gathered the dust of Abuja’s harmattan, his slight frame bent over a book he was reading, tracing the word s with his fingers, his lips moving slowly. It was the Hausa version of the Bible. He was actually sitting in school, made up of a number of canopies. It was evening so school was closed, but under the next canopy, which served as a classroom three pupils, were practicing sums on a standing blackboard, under the tutelage of the eldest, a girl no more than 12. Later, they would be joined by their teacher.
A little distance away under a mango tree, some young men, tired from playing football splayed out on mats resting, their feet dusty, their bodies sweaty. Further in, women and children were gathering by the two black water tanks, waiting for the arrival of the water truck that came every two days.
“My brother was killed along with his son,” Baba Fambia said. “They [Boko Haram]went away with his wife and daughter. I don’t know how many people were killed.”
He had crawled out of the ditch he had been hiding in the next morning to make the gruesome discovery after the insurgents had retreated, their killing spree over. They had first attacked Gwoshe the previous October and the villagers lame resistence with bows and arrows had quickly been swept away by the superior firepower of the insurgents. The military had saved the day then. But not on the second attack.
Baba Fambia starred into space, his eyes dark and misty. Alongside his brother, he had lost his grandchild, an 18 year old who was working as a mechanic. In all, he lost five relatives that day. But he had 12 others left and together they fled for safety. They spent a month hiding in the hills until soldiers from the Nigerian Army rescued them.
What was left of his family scattered as the village he had known all his life had dispersed. Some are in IDP camps in Maiduguri, others in Yola and some had travelled as far south as Jos. Baba Fambia travelled south, settling down first among the Eggons of Nasarawa State, where he  got a piece of land and started cultivating. But neither he nor his plants were allowed to take root as civil violence between the locals and nomads forced him to move yet again.
When he heard there were IDPs from Gwoza in the Kuchin Goro camp, he decided to join them and has been living there since the last eight months.

Maryamu
The loss of his sister in-law, Maryamu, 22, who was abducted along with her month-old daughter by Boko Haram haunts Baba Fambia. She was a nice woman, he said, and every time she returned from the farm, she always checked on him.
“She cooked for him and if I am ill she looks after me,” he said. He kept quiet for some time and shook his head.
Maryamu’s abduction had gone unreported. There was nowhere to report to, Baba Fambia said.
“It’s only Boko Haram that’s there now. Perhaps when peace returns and the police resume, then we can report,” he said.
Maryamu was not the only woman abducted from Gwoshe that night. When Boko Haram attacked, they killed young men and spared old men and old women. But as their brutality grew, they killed the old men too, took the young women, leaving only the old women to wail their losses. Those who managed to flee to the hills returned after the killings to find corpses of men and children. No women.
“Many people have been taken away and nothing has been heard of them. We are praying to God that if they are alive, He protects them and bring them back,” he said.
The sense of abandonment did not stop at Gwoshe but travelled with him all the way to Kuchin Goro. The only visible sign that the IDPs had any connection with the government were the campaign posters of Hon. Peter Biye Gumtha who represents the Gwoza Area in the House of Representatives. He is well thought of among the IDPs because he was the only government official who had visited them, and he had done so twice.
Other than that, they depend on groups and well-meaning organisations for support. Even the school in the camp, made up of all but three canopies, was set up by Pastor David Olatunji who pays the five teachers attending to the almost 300 students in the camp. He provides free writing and instructions materials for the students.
Mr Noah Bahago, who hails from Kaduna State, who had joined the three pupils under the canopy and was now teaching them mathematics, is the head teacher of the school. He was not displaced but had been invited by Pastor Olatunji to help educate the IDPs.
 “We started the school under a tree across the road,” he said gesturing towards some shacks in the distance. “We were there for some time before the owner of this space gave us permission to move here.”
He had been teaching in Zaria before moving down to Abuja. And when the pastor invited him to work with the IDPs what he saw in the camp affected him and made him join them in the camp.
“The pupils can’t go to schools in town because of transport cost and other expenses,” he said. “I look at the students with pity. So I came to stay with them here because of the pity I have for them.”
Three of the other teachers are IDPs, only one lives somewhere else and comes every morning.
How They Came
The camp in New Kuchin Goro was born out of necessity, as Hamza Aminu, who is said to be the chairman of the camp explained. He lived further in, close to the stream where the IDPs fetch water for use to supplement the clean water they are provided with by the Living Faith Church. His shack is opposite the entrance of a huge duplex into which some women carrying jerry cans disappeared.
“The house belongs to someone who built it but has not moved in yet. Sometimes we get water from the borehole here,” he explained.
He was sitting on a bench in front of his shack. Behind him there was a bustle as women tended to huge pots on open flames while butchers chopped meat on crooked tables, joking and laughing. The smell of fermenting guinea corn used for the local brew is heavy in the air.
Aminu, surrounded by his friends, stared ahead in the direction of the stream where some girls carrying water containers on their head where coming back.
“Most people can’t afford to buy water from the borehole so they fetch from the river,” he said.
He has been at New Kuchin Goro for two years. Not a refugee, like the others, he explained that the camp had started when Government officials demolished the village they had been living in.
 “We relocated here because of demolition,” he said. “There was a village here before but the FG had sold the place to individuals so the people who owned this farm allowed us to stay here before others from Maiduguri, Yola, and other places came and Joined us here.”
Isiah Chungwom, sitting opposite Aminu explained that the IDPs were from all over, not just those affected by the Boko Haram insurgency.
“The first ones here were those from the Bauchi crisis. There are many Sayawas here from Bauchi. Some came as a result of the Fulani crisis from Plateau, Nasarawa and recently from Benue State,” he said.
“There are many Igbos here,” James, a young man sitting on a log chipped in. “There are people from all over the country here.”
For young men like James, without proper schooling and without privileges, jobs are hard to come by. Some of his mates are casual workers, labourers for hire, who line the streets of Abuja with their diggers and shovels, available to anyone with some manual labour to be done. Some of the women work as street sweepers in the employ of the Abuja Environmental Protection Agency.
Hamza’s young son had just been brought back from the hospital. The doctors said he needed surgery and that would cost N35, 000. An amount Aminu could not afford. So he brought the son back.
There are no medical facilities in the camp. Not even a medical practitioner so the residents often resorted to self-help. Wandering drug sellers abound selling anything from anti-flu drugs to paracetamols out of the plastic baskets they carry on their heads. What ails the boy is beyond the drugs they can offer and the boy’s father seemed at a loss.
“Let him sit there and wait,” Chungwom said, gesturing to the boy to go back to where he had been summoned from.
This waiting could last forever, as most of the IDPs have discovered. They wait for water. For donations. For charity. For a miracle. They wait. However close to the entrance to the camp, those waiting for the water tanker were in frenzy as the truck had just arrived. The jostling for places intensified accompanied by cries of excitement. They will fill their containers and wait another two days for the next supply of water from the Living Faith Church.
In his place under the canopy, Baba Fambia was still waiting. Waiting for peace to return, for Maryamu to be found. Waiting for an opportunity to make a difference in the forth coming elections.
“We have complained before, there should be arrangements for us to get voter’s card to cast our votes. We are Nigerians. We have a right to vote.”
When asked who he would vote for, he smiled and said, “By God’s grace I know who to vote for. Someone who will secure this country.” But he wouldn’t mention any name.
As dusk set in, Baba Fambia was still under the canopy, and like many others in the camp, he is still waiting.