IDP Diaries: ‘We Have To Share Aid With Some Camp Officials Or Suffer’
Hadiza has watched the game go on for a while and has had to play it too. To survive, a lot of IDPs have to share aid materials with corrupt camp officials or risk losing their spaces and livelihood in the camps.
They have sent at least two people out of the camp. They did it because they refused to share aid materials with some officials. It was the attack that drove us to this place and we have to survive in the camp. My name is Hadiza and I am 22 years old.
The way they do it, the leader will select some aid workers like volunteers and they will come to our tents to write our names. But they have one condition; we must share whatever we get with them fifty-fifty. That is, they take half and we take half.
Sometimes, we know they have arrangements with officials so that once the aid materials come, they take their share and the things they want. Then they share the rest to us, the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).
There was a time we told them we needed cooking materials and an official from the Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) said we would get them only if we agreed to share fifty-fifty. He accused us of reporting them to their supervisor and said he would rather give it to people that will not report them. We promised that we will not report them and agreed to fifty-fifty sharing. So he wrote our names.
When we got the materials, we followed the agreement and shared with them. They came to collect it and they put it in the car. Sometimes, they ask us to take it outside for them. They don’t want people to know and they will seize your card if you speak up. They have sent people away because they talked.
(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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