Why displaced women in Abuja camps need help

Shabbily dressed women can be seen around while barely clad children ran around on barefoot. This is the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) community in Sabon Kuchi Goro village  and one of the over 13 camps set up in the Federal Capital Territory(FCT)  by people fleeing from the insurgency in the North East of the country. […]

Shabbily dressed women can be seen around while barely clad children ran around on barefoot. This is the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) community in Sabon Kuchi Goro village  and one of the over 13 camps set up in the Federal Capital Territory(FCT)  by people fleeing from the insurgency in the North East of the country.
Other  displaced persons communities include  Durumi, Wasa, Kpegyi, Waru, Pya Kasa, Kuje, Lubge , Mararaba, Nyanya,  Mission field at Kwali  in the FCT and Kugaru and Kagruma in Nasarawa state to mention a few. In these places are a large numbers of women and children who are often the most victims of conflicts and violence.
Though these IDP camps are not set up by government, there are a high number of  displaced persons in these communities and they are in dire need of help and support. Some of them resorted to creating the makeshift camps due to inadequate official camps. Having lost family members and property, some of them arrived with just the cloth they wore.
Checks in the camp show absence of toilet facilities and most of the tents which served as their accommodation were made with sacks and have no doors.
There was also no security presence around the camp ironically a pointer to running away from insecurity and still facing insecurity in their new abode.  This reporter was told the camp houses over 80 women and 102 children. And some of the women had gone into the bush to look for firewood.
Women and children in particular in these camps are in dire need of food, medical attention, clothing and  economic empowerment among others.
Leader of the women in the Sabo Kuchi Goro Camp,  Ladi Martins said  the women are in dire need of a source of livelihood and economic empowerment to start generating income to help themselves and their children.
She said they are even ready to be engaged in sweeping the streets of Abuja  in order to have income to meet their various needs.
She also called for a school for their children even if it is a makeshift one in the camp, saying their education has been aborted since the insurgency.
Narrating her ordeal, a young displaced woman, Lami Nuhu said the insurgents shot her on the leg and shot her two children to death on the mountain they ran to after her village  was attacked. They left her for dead.
She was lucky to escape with her life but still has a bullet lodged in her leg and called for assistance to access medical treatment.
For Roseline John, the insurgents killed her husband while she was pregnant and she had to trek with the pregnancy and her three little kids to Cameroun before she heard of the displaced persons community in  Sabon Kuchi Goro and came there.
Another displaced person at the camp , Mrs Hannatu Andraus who is from Gwoza Local Government Area of Borno State said she arrived at the camp on 16 December 2014 from Cameroun where they ran to after her village was attacked by the insurgents.
She said they ran to hide in the mountain near the village but the insurgents followed them there and killed people, adding that those of them that survived climbed higher to the mountain but the insurgents came there and started killing people including her brother with machine guns.
Andraus said the insurgents abducted women and children and locked them in a room where they only served them maize and Okro and many of them died of starvation there.
“We climbed down from the mountain around 12 a.m and trekked several kilometers from morning till night everyday till we got to Cameroun. Everyday batches of 50 and 100 internally displaced persons arrived in Cameroun. Some people helped us from Cameroun to Yola and then we were helped by vehicle to come to the camp in Abuja. People here are from Borno, Adamawa and Yobe.”
Andraus  lamented that since they arrived Kuchi Goro, government at all levels have neither come to see them at the camp nor provided them things and they have been relying on the goodwill of philantropic individuals and organizations.
In her words, “Since we are Nigerians and government is aware of what is happening to us, they should help us and also come to the aid of our people who  are still trapped on the mountains and have no food. Here we don’t have food,  medicine, or  school for our children and we are suffering.”
Andraus who said she was a teacher before her village was attacked said  she is willing to be engaged as a teacher in the camp  so that the children can become occupied instead of lotering around.
Speaking on the plight of the IDPs when she led a delegation of  the  International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) Abuja chapter to donate items to the IDPs in Sabo Kuchi Goro, Chairperson of the Abuja branch, Mrs Amina Agbaje called on the Federal Capital Territory administration to come to the aid of the Internally Displaced Persons(IDPs) particularly women and children.
“You can see their tents. It is made up of bags of rice. It serves as their bed and their room, and there are women and young girls among them who are vulnerable to rape. They are just here without protection.
“We are calling government to provide accomodation for the internally displaced persons particularly the women and children because they are the most vulnerable.
“You can see this place is an isolated place where bad boys come to take weed so it is not a place where you can cry for help and someone will hear you” Agbaje  said.
National Publicity Secretary of FIDA Nigeria, Ogechi Abu said FIDA Nigeria is calling on the Federal Government and the armed forces to do everything possible to end the insurgency in order to stop its negative impact on the people.
She said FIDA is calling on the FCT minister Senator Bala Mohammed, to consider that the internally displaced persons are in his territory now, carry them along  and do what he can for them pending when there is normalcy and they can return home.