Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, ranks amongst top countries of world’s new internally displaced persons (IDPs), a 2014 report by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) has shown.
IDMC report examines the causes and impacts of displacement on people around the world. The report is based on data and analysis gathered between January and December 2014 in 60 countries and territories across the world.
The report which is released yearly, says at least a total of 1,075,300 million persons were displaced in Nigeria in 2014.
“The majority of the increase since last year is the result of the protracted crises in Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Nigeria,” says the report.
“The five countries accounted for 60 per cent of new displacement worldwide, and in all except Nigeria more than a million people fled their homes during the year,” the report adds.
In sub-Saharan Africa, there were 11.4 million IDPs across 22 countries, with Sudan accounting for at least 3.1 million, DRC 2.8 million, South Sudan 1.5 million, Somalia 1.1 million and Nigeria at least a million.
More than three million people were forced to flee conflict in the Central African Republic (CAR), DRC, South Sudan and Sudan, and Boko Haram’s ruthless campaign to establish an independent Islamic state in north-eastern Nigeria also drove significant new displacement
Issues of poverty, increasing inequality and social frustration also form the backdrop to Boko Haram’s emergence and expansion in Nigeria which has spilled over and caused internal displacement in Cameroon and Niger in 2014.
Recently, the Nigeria Army freed nearly 700 girls and women during the push to confine the group in the Sambisa forest.
It has been over a year since the Islamist terrorist organisation Boko haram kidnap 276 girls from their school in Chibok, prompting world-wide outrage under the #Bring back our girls hastag.
More than 200 of those girls are still missing, among are the more than 2,000 girls and women that Amnesty International says were taken by the Islamist group since the beginning of last year.
The group has abducted at least 500 people in north-eastern Nigeria since 2009, and such abuses escalated exponentially in internal displacement worldwide in 2014. IDPs cited fear of abduction as a key factor in their decision to flee.
Increasingly brutal attacks by Boko Haram intensified dramatically in the second half of the year, causing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in the north-east that spilled over into neighbouring countries.
“Data gathered in the north-eastern states of Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Taraba and Yobe revealed nearly 75,000 people displaced by inter-communal violence during the year,” the report states.
According to the report, in Nigeria, international support improved the national capacity to collect information, leading them to reduce their cumulative estimate by 70 percent.
Among countries in the West Africa region studied in the report, Nigeria was worst affected by new displacement in 2014.
Thousands of people in Mali, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria in particular were exposed to risks to their physical security including armed attacks and clashes, forced recruitment, arbitrary killings, sexual violence and abductions.
Attendance rates in schools in North-East Nigeria have declined dramatically as Boko Haram stepped up its attacks on schools.
The unprecedented crisis in north-eastern Nigeria and the ensuing large-scale displacement have created enormous operational challenges for the government, whose efforts to respond have been fragmented and uncoordinated.
JOSEPHINE OKOJIE
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