Shocking details 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”.