But while women and men groups alike ministered special songs to the applause of parishioners, a 12-year-old girl (whose name is withheld as requested by the family) paced about the big auditorium restlessly. She could barely sit for 10 minutes without standing up to draw the attention of other children around her to something somewhere or members who were not necessarily doing anything comic.
I was to learn at the end of the service that this promising young lady is the third of five siblings whose parents (Lalai and Rifkatu) were killed by rampaging Boko Haram terrorists in 2013. She has yet to fully overcome the bloody death of her parents, particularly her father whom she was said to have been extremely close to. That devastation, I was told, is responsible for the unusual behaviour she has exhibited ever since.
She is not insane, her brothers told me. The change in her mood is a fallout of the death of their parents and the family members are praying earnestly she gets over it soon.
It took her over six minutes to respond to my question through an interpreter (the second child of the family). When she eventually spoke, her first sentence was that she did not believe her parents were dead because she frequently sees them in her dreams and feels their presence around her when she is awake.
“My parents are around me. They watch over me when I am sleeping. They are coming back from where they travelled to,” she said, tears streaming down her juvenile cheeks.
“I believe my dad will come home soon. I am waiting for his return. He can’t leave just like that. But I don’t know why he is staying this long. He told me he was going to farm only for some people to bring dead bodies and say they are my parents,” she said in a voice that sent chills down my spine.
I had to cut the chat for her sake and mine as well since tears were already welling up my eyes and I could burst out if I continued pressing.
When both of us were calm enough to say goodbye, I felt like asking her one more question – her dream and aspiration in life. “I want to be a soldier,” she said, to my utter amazement.
“But why do you want to be a solder?” I asked, not knowing what answer to expect.
“I want to be a soldier so that I can fight Boko Haram,” she said.
Assuming parental responsibility at 23
When I finished speaking with her, I took her eldest brother, 23-year-old Elijah Lalai, to a place we could both sit down and talk some more about his sudden assumption of parental responsibility of his siblings after their parents’ death.
Incidentally, Elijah told me he has been living in Apapa area of Lagos, where BusinessDay’s corporate office is located. He is one of the numerous commercial motorcyclists (Okada) operating in the area. He said when it became too tough for him after the death of their parents, he decided to come to Lagos and join some of his male friends who were earning a living as commercial motorcyclists.
According to him, his parents were shot and killed on the same spot while working in the farm in a Chibok village. His friend’s father, whose farm was close by, escaped with serious injuries.
“It was my friend’s father who was close by that managed to come home to report with blood gushing from his right hand after he was shot. But before we got there after Boko Haram left, it was too late. My mum and dad were shot at close range. They were long dead when we got there. This is how Boko Haram has rendered many children orphans,” Elijah narrated.
“Some children who are lucky had one of their parents killed. That is why in this place you have children that have father but no mother and those with mother but no father. The worst is our category. Our parents were killed on the same day. The story is the same in all the villages Boko Haram attacked in Borno State,” he said.
Since the insurgents had also set their house ablaze, the only option left for Elijah and his siblings after the death of their parents was to seek refuge at the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp in Chibok, where he still lives with his siblings whenever he is visiting from Lagos. As you read this, Elijah is already back in Lagos.
“All my siblings are staying at the IDPs’ camp. I was also staying at the camp before I left for Lagos. We have no other place to stay since they burnt our house. It has been very hard for us. There are times I just look for somewhere to weep to avoid provoking my younger ones to cry too. The help coming from government is not enough at all. That was why I decided to go to Lagos,” he told me.
He said life has also been extremely harsh for his aunt, whose husband was killed by Boko Haram. She was left alone with nine children. She moved from place to place with the children until she finally arrived in Lagos with seven of them; one of the remaining two fled to Taraba State while the other fled to Doyari village, near Chibok.
No home in Lagos
As he struggles in Lagos to alleviate the acute poverty threatening the continued existence of his family back in Chibok, with no decent accommodation to lay his head after the day’s hustle, Elijah is often left out in the cold, cold Lagos night.
“I have not rented a room in Lagos. I am trusting God to be able to do that soon. Sometimes I sleep inside the queuing truck of our people in Apapa, at other times I sleep on top of my motorcycle at the bus-stop somewhere around Mobil Road (Apapa),” he said.
“But I am not in Lagos to quickly look for an accommodation. I went to Lagos in order to find money to feed my little ones. They are my primary concern because I feel pain in my heart seeing them going hungry each day. Whatever I send to them from Lagos gets to them, no matter how long it takes. I usually take some items to Iddo and give to our people who are going to Maiduguri. From there they will get the items. But it usually takes time. I am also farming at home; my immediate younger brother is supervising that. He too has finished secondary school,” he said.
As I spoke with Elijah, I saw a sharp difference between him and many of his age-mates that I interacted with in Chibok. The young man, whose admission into Ramat Polytechnic, Maiduguri was impeded by paucity of funds, has five credits in his West African Examination Council (WAEC), including Mathematics and English Language.
“I am trusting God for help once I am admitted into higher institution. I want to be a doctor. I am very good in science subjects as my WAEC result shows. But one must live first before he talks about education. Feeding has not been easy for us, but God has been faithful. The church has also been very helpful,” he said.
Twenty-year-old Emmanuel Laila, Elijah’s immediate younger brother, also finished secondary education with good grades. He now takes care of the other three siblings while Elijah is away in Lagos.
“Being an orphan at one’s early life is not funny, but that is life. When I started secondary school, I didn’t know my parents would die the same day before I finished. But we have no choice other than to move on,” Emmanuel said.
“I am not talking about furthering my education for now. I just want to survive first with my siblings and maybe return to school later, by God’s grace. We are all involved in farming here. That is what we are surviving on. I should have gone to Lagos too, but our younger ones will suffer, particularly our sister who is still traumatised by what happened,” he told me in polished English.
Disadvantaged IDPs
Well-dressed visitors attract to the IDPs’ camp attract spontaneous attention from these special citizens rendered homeless by Boko Haram. This scenario is particularly applicable in remote communities in and around Chibok where the insurgents had sacked several homes, destroyed farms, carted away cows and goats and left the victims in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. Unlike IDPs’ camps within the Maiduguri metropolis which enjoy proximity to sources of humanitarian aid, the situation in Chibok is dire.
As I entered a camp in Chibok, I saw that peculiar focus on me by the IDPs. Two thoughts occupied my mind: either they were looking at me as a concerned person or they were assessing me to be sure I was not a Boko Haram suicide bomber who was there to blow up another IDP camp.
But I soon learned why they fixed their gaze on me. It was a look of expectation. These particular IDPs don’t receive humanitarian officials quite often, and so, whenever one comes around, all of them, male and female, old and young, will jostle for vantage position where items can get to them as fast as possible.
Compared with other IDPs’ camps in Borno, the frequency of humanitarian workers’ visit to Chibok is lower. My interactions with residents of Chibok, Maiduguri and Damboa revealed that the disparity was as a result of three factors: bad roads, proximity issues, and absence of armed security men for those going to Chibok.
While there is no direct flight from any part of Nigeria to Maiduguri, I gathered that the Borno State government still works with relevant stakeholders to convey foreign aid workers and their local affiliates in state-owned aircraft from Abuja. Aid workers who are not so fortunate coming from outside the Northeast are left with the option of flying to either Kano or Yola and continuing the remaining journey to Maiduguri by road. By the time they get to the Borno State capital, fatigue would have set in, making the torturous journey to Chibok undesirable.
This category of aid workers, I learned, often had to limit their visit to IDPs’ camps in Maiduguri, where they would leave behind food items for the camp authorities with instruction to take certain percentage of the items to Chibok. But whether such items eventually get to Chibok is another concern altogether.
Kashim Shettima, Borno State governor, had in June last year ordered the police and the State Security Services (SSS) to go after officials involved in the diversion of relief materials meant for the IDPs after report emerged that some officials left to supervise the distribution of the items from humanitarian organisations and philanthropic individuals were selling the items to enrich themselves. At the camps, severe hunger still holds sway while the lives of the IDPs are being threatened by malnutrition and malaria. Some of the IDPS who can no longer cope are now scattered across Nigerian states, with Lagos being a preferred destination.
IDPs in Damboa Local Government Area are better off in terms of favourable location for easy access to humanitarian workers coming from Maiduguri. The IDPs’ camp that I visited in Damboa was lively with appreciable number of aid workers and activities like cooking and social interaction. The camp, which has United Nations-branded emergency shelters, had heavy presence of armed soldiers when I visited.
Another advantage for the IDPs in Maiduguri is that all the foreign aid providers are based in Maiduguri where there are basic amenities like motorable roads, potable water, electricity, hotels with swimming pools, bars and clubs, in addition to the soldiers and policemen usually attached to them as they go about their activities to ward off pockets of attack here and there.
However, some of these aid workers still shuttle between Maiduguri and Damboa, about an-hour-and-a-half journey, with special security escort. Their local counterparts who have plenty of items to distribute also enjoy this special security privilege. But those with few items usually wait for the mass journey where motorists and commuters are escorted to Damboa by security forces.
More humanitarian presence needed in Chibok
But for the global attention that the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls brought to the local government area, many travellers would not be interested in visiting the place particularly due to its unfavourable location. Chibok is about 40 minutes’ drive from Damboa on an extremely bad road which usually tells on the body of commuters at the end of each journey.
It will take a true humanitarian and adventurist spirit for aid workers to want to visit again after unpleasant experience at first attempt. Curiously, travellers are not provided with armed security men between Chibok and Damboa, a stretch of road where the insurgents had ambushed and killed helpless victims while lucky ones escaped with various degrees of injuries.
While these factors continue to generally hamper movement of humanitarian workers to the troubled spot, there are still few aid workers who consider Chibok as their point of primary assignment. Their impact, however, is almost insignificant when measured against what is needed.
And while there is no overt provision of armed security forces for those travelling to Chibok, the army authority on request usually provides security cover for humanitarian officials who are able to reach Chibok to guard them as they distribute relief materials to the IDPs.
Although some IDPs in Chibok complained about insufficient humanitarian visits, the camp is heavily guarded by Nigerian soldiers just like their counterparts in Maiduguri and Damboa.
But several villages are still in ruins, just the way the insurgents left them. The level of destruction is enormous such that reconstruction/rehabilitation of these communities may not happen anytime soon. Residents of these villages constitute the bulk of IDPs in Maiduguri and in strategic camps in places like Chibok, Damboa, Mubi, Askira and others.
NATHANIEL AKHIGBE, Just back from Borno State
