Cheeling revelations of how caregivers, security agencies rape, exploit IDPs

Former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu
Dogara has lamented various forms of abuse Internally
Displaced Persons (IDPs) are subjected to across the
centres, especially in the North-Eastern part of the
country.

He revealed that the Sexual Assault Referral Centre
(SARC) compiled a total of 5,623 incidents involving child
abuse and other sexual and gender-based violence from
January 2018 to July 2022 for Borno, Adamawa and Yobe
States.

According to him, the study said that, “640 arrests, or 88.6
percent of the total number of SGBV incidents in four
years, were recorded, apart from the 82 offenders that
have been charged across various courts located in the
three States”.

The report also noted that the centre secured eight
convictions out of the total number of sexual offenders
taken to courts.
Dogara made the assertion when he delivered a keynote
address titled: ‘The IDP Question as a Stain On Nigeria’s
Conscience’ at the 7th Henna Ball Awards Night Organised
by TOZALI Magazine at the ICC, Abuja on Saturday, 26th
November, 2022.

He further disclosed that the Human Rights Watch
documented sexual abuse, including rape and exploitation
of 43 women and girls living in seven IDPs camps in
Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.
He said that it was also reported in their assessment that
gender-based violence was a feature of displacement by
disaster in the North East Nigeria, stating that, “Moreover,
most studies have concluded that the culprits and
perpetrators of gender-based violence (GBV) at IDPs were
civilians, military, and emergency management officers
detailed to protect and support internally displaced
persons”.

The report said, “Government officials and other
authorities in Nigeria raped and sexually abused women
and girls displaced by the clashes with Boko Haram. The
government neither did anything to defend the displaced
women and girls nor ensured that they had access to
adequate basic rights and services. Also, there was no
serious punishment for the abusers, who were camp
leaders, vigilante groups, policemen, and soldiers”.

He then gave accounts from Victims saying, “Just listen to
the chilling accounts given by some victims: Aisha Umar, a
15-year-old IDP in Borno State, took her life after being
raped by an official of an International Non-Governmental
Organization, identified as Huzaifa Adam, 35years.

“The deceased, who was into menial jobs for survival, was
reportedly lured to the apartment of the suspect at 303
Housing Estate, near Dalori IDP camp, Maiduguri, under
the guise of cleaning the place. The girl was crying on top
of her voice while being raped and was quoted as saying,
‘Why would you do this to me? Instead of bringing shame
to my parents after deflowering me, I would rather die
than go home.’

“Out of pain and heartbreak, Aisha entered the kitchen,
took a knife and stabbed herself to death. When Huzaifa
noticed this, he picked her up to rush her to the hospital
and on his way to the hospital, he had an accident and
killed another person on the spot. It was a case of double
murder”, he added.

According to him, “In the then Gombe IDP camp, a 16-
year-old Laraba told International Centre for Investigative
Reporting that an official of the State Emergency Relief
Agency named Ibrahim took her from the camp where she
was to his home on the pretext that she would be helping
the wife with household chores”.

In her words, “I was happy leaving the camp, but when we
got to his house, there was no wife. He raped me
continuously for three nights, locked me inside his house
for days and threatened me.”
She continued, “I managed to escape and came back to
the camp. I got pregnant. An old woman we call ‘Kaka’,
gave me some leaves. I was bleeding for almost two
weeks and smelling.”

For 15-year-old Lami, whose parents were killed by Boko
Haram insurgents in her village on account of which she
managed to escape to one of the camps in Maiduguri on
an open truck, “some government officials came to the
camp and took many young girls away and later sold them
as slaves”.

Having been sold into slavery, she ended up in the house
of one Alhaji Aliyu whose brother and wife abused her.
She recounted, “… that was how I got to Alhaji Aliyu’s
house and it was there, every day, his brother forcefully
slept with me.

“After that, he would beat me and one of Alhaji’s wives too
would always beat me. One day she attacked me with a
knife. That was how I got the wound in my skull.”

Thankfully she survived the brutal attack but Alhaji himself,
his rapist brother and the wife that stabbed her with a
knife in the head were never arrested, much less
prosecuted.

He said that the above accounts are just a tip of the
iceberg and not the goriest.

Yakubu Dogara said that, “Honestly, some of the stories
make you want to puke. Therefore, the question where is
our conscience, is not the only question, it is every
question. Don’t we know that we are not only responsible
for what we make happen but also for what we allow?”
According to him,”Have we forgotten that community just
doesn’t happen to us, we make conscious, deliberate
efforts to build community.

Who are we waiting for to help
us out of this mess- the government?
He stressed that, “Although I must concede the fact that
we are not individually responsible for the plight of the
IDPs, I cannot deny the fact that we are individually and
collectively responsible to proffer a solution. We cannot
remain passive in the midst of this moral crisis except our
conscience is scorched. I dare say that the conditions
under which IDPs live are actually the conditions of the
hearts of their fellow citizens”.

He then asked, “What is the way out? In the midst of all
these crises, what have we done as individuals and what
has the Northern establishment done? I do not make any
excuse, I am part of the establishment. We have done
nothing to our collective shame!”
The former Speaker said that, “Imagine the Northern
establishment had organised a submit where select IDPs
from all the camps are invited to share their plight and
thereafter establish a trust fund for IDPs in which every
Northerner is required to pay in his/her month’s salary
within a quarter while those who can, give more give as
God lays it in their hearts”.

“No doubt, if that had happened, we would have set aside
enough funds to cater for the needs of all IDPs regardless
of what the Government chooses to do”, he stressed.
He further asked, “But what does the Northern
establishment do? We love political gatherings and how
we love to interface with Presidential candidates! We
always talk about leadership but are always shy to provide
it. When faced with the reality of our failures as leaders,
we always seek to cover the same with bombastic
grandiosity”.

“Just ask yourself this question, if Sardauna, Tafawa
Balewa and their contemporaries were alive today, would
they allow this scourge to fester without rising to the
occasion to tame it? How we love to talk about them and
how we hate to re-enact their examples”, he added.
He then suggested that, “Our religious leaders and
Institutions can also do so much but they are also too
busy. They can build hospitals, schools, provide food and
clothing and set aside funds to fund the prosecution of all
perpetrators of sexual violence in IDP camps” .

Dogara lamented that, “But how our religious leaders love
crowds and yet hate the individual! As individuals, we can
do so much too. Journalists can help amplify the plights of
the IDPs and serve as their voices. Lawyers, teachers,
doctors and allied medical personnel can offer pro bono
services. Spirited individuals and organisations can offer
scholarships and food stuff”.
“I tell you a story. When I was in office as Speaker, I led
efforts to create the North-East Development Commission
(NEDC) to help pull together resources for the recovery,
reconstruction and development of the North East
because then the North West and North Central had not
become theatres of conflict”,he stressed.
According to him, “The Initiative won support of all NASS
members because of the pathetic situations and with
great difficulty, we were able to pull it across the finish
line. Don’t ask me what has become of the NEDC. I am
getting discomforting signals but I don’t have any concrete
evidence so it will be most distressing for me to make a
value judgement on the bases of those signals”.

He also said that, “Under our leadership also, we managed
to pull all North East members into a caucus that met
fortnightly. I lead select members on a visit to all the
major IDPs’ camps across all the Zones with the
exception of Camps in Maiduguri on account of scheduling
issues with the then Governor. We took along with us tons
of relief materials which we donated to the IPDs and
heard their stories first hand”.
He explained that, “At the Wasa Camp here in Abuja, we
sank boreholes for them and built a dispensary and
donated it to FCT administration to run in order to meet
the most immediate health needs of the IDPs. We raised
money to help address the plight of IDPs and by the time I
left office, our account had a balance of over N50m”.

“In addition, I tried in vain to push discussions about
getting the international community to organise an
international donor conference for Nigeria on humanitarian
grounds”, he added.
According to him, “The argument was that if the
international community helped to organise such
fundraising events for Kosovo, Iraq and Syria, why
wouldn’t they do so for Nigeria? I got the Oxford Union to
agree to give us a slot to canvass: why the international
community should organise such a donor conference for
Nigeria”.

He also said that “the European Parliament was also
prepared to receive us for the same reasons. All that was
left was for me to communicate when we will be
undertaking the journey. But because I didn’t have the
budget to fund the outing of the delegation, I sought the
assistance of a Governor who was at the epicentre of the
crisis, but his lack of interest in the matter was shockingly
embarrassing”.

The former Speaker also said that, “Attempts to even get
him to be the lead presenter at both Oxford Union and
European Parliament were not enough incentives for him.
That was how the project was abandoned. No one picked
up the matter, it was just like a lone voice crying in the
wilderness” .

In his concluding remarks, Dogara said that, “Whatever
may be the case, we cannot lose hope. The very fact that
we are talking about this gives me hope. Our hope must
be rooted in the telling stories of China, Rwanda, UAE,
Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, etc, which all prove the
point that we can turn our ashes into glory and that
nothing is impossible, if we don’t give in or give up”.

He stressed that, “The stories of those countries are a
validation of the saying that every problem comes with its
own solution but it takes only those looking for the
solution to find it. No doubt, it will take leadership for us
to replicate those stories and I am happy that so many of
us here are stepping up to provide that leadership”.

“The kind of leadership that compels us to begin to teach
kids not only to hate violence but to show immediate
disapproval to signs of incipient violence. That way, they
cannot grow up to become disaffected rebels”, he added.
He opined that, “This is because it has been demonstrated
over time that no individual becomes what he or she
hates.

It will take the kind of leadership that recognizes
that compassion is not tossing a coin at IDPs, it is pulling
down the system that produces IDPs, leadership that
believes that history does not just happen to us, we make
history happen”.

“Individually and collectively, we can provide healing for
many broken IDPs, especially women IDPs who are
trapped in this existential crisis”, he further said.