IDP Diaries: ‘No Feeding Allowance Received In Six Months’
The allowance received by the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the camp was small but they were certain it would come. In the last six months, their hopes have been dashed repeatedly, leaving them hungry.
We used to be given N17, 000 monthly. But it’s been six months since we last received this money. The government shared cards and said they have relocated people back to their villages. Some of us women have not had our husbands with us for up to six years!
Some of our husbands are in the barracks, some are at Kainji, some are abducted. Our villages have still not been fixed, yet they say they have returned people back to these same villages. Now we’re suffering so much, we don’t have food, we don’t have anything. The governor is even quiet as well.
One time, at 1:30 a.m., we heard an entourage of cars driving into the compound. So many people even ran away because they thought it was Boko Haram. But it was only the governor. Then people started screaming to tell others “the governor has come, the governor has come.”
We all came out en masse when we heard that. They then shared these cards for us, which is supposed to be our ticket to the monthly allowance. It’s been three months since then and there is still silence from the governor. We have no food. We have no money. We are in deep suffering. We don’t have our men.
(Additional reporting by Fatima Bukar and Yakura Kumshe)
Note: IDP Diaries is a first-person account by the subject themselves. The account has been translated for reading by HumAngle.
This is a multiple-part series; click here to read other IDP Diaries.
This report is a partnership between HumAngle Media and Premium Times Center for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) under the ‘Accountability Journalism & Investigative Reporting for Deepening Democracy and Development’ project.
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