Maiduguri resident Ahmed Muhammed wanders through the rubble left behind as he recalls the outbreak of fighting in his city a decade ago that launched the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria.
“We heard shooting — badadadadadada — here, there,
everywhere around us,” the 44-year-old railway worker told AFP.
“We thought the end of the universe had come.”
In late July 2009, tensions between the hardline Islamist
sect and authorities in northeast Nigeria boiled over as the group launched a
wave of attacks and security forces fought back ruthlessly.
The epicenter of the violence was the compound of the
group’s founder Muhammad Yusuf.
After several days of fighting, Yusuf and hundreds of Boko
Haram members were dead and a conflict had been unleashed that would devastate
the region.
The mosque and the homes that once stood there are now just
a pile of debris — an unmarked monument to the suffering of the past 10 years.
In the decade since the uprising began, some two million
people have been uprooted from their homes and 27,000 killed as the bloodshed
has spilt into neighbouring countries.
Boko Haram has turned vast swathes of territory into a no
man’s land and forced its way into international headlines by abducting
hundreds of schoolgirls.
While the Nigerian army has pushed the fighters from major
towns, the jihadists have splintered into factions and spawned an offshoot
aligned to the Islamic State group that has unleashed its own campaign of
violence.
‘No option’
Waves of the conflict crashed over Hadiza Bukar’s village
near Baga close to the shores of Lake Chad in 2015 when Boko Haram fighters
stormed through the area.
Bukar fled with her newborn twin sons, leaving behind her
husband and two other children.
She has not heard from them since.
What remains of the family is now among the roughly
quarter-of-a-million people displaced and struggling to survive in and around
Maiduguri, capital of Borno State.
Studded across the city are government-approved camps and
informal settlements of corrugated iron, sticks and shreds of tarpaulin.
The only place Bukar found to live is at the ground zero of
the insurgency that tore her life apart. Her makeshift home stands on the edge
of the ruins of Yusuf’s former compound.
When the downpours come in the rainy season the place turns
into a quagmire.
“Many people told us stories about what happened here. They
warned us there was a history,” she said, of the bloodshed in 2009. “But we had
no option. We have nowhere to go. We decided to stay.”
Across town in another district Idrissa Isah, 45, scrapes by
as best he can.
Isah used to send cows to Nigeria’s economic hub Lagos, but
now all he has is a small patch of earth near his shack that a local landowner
lets him till.
The little he grows helps supplement sporadic handouts from
international aid groups and feed his family. He says he has had no government
support.
Isah is desperate to return to his village of Makulbe about
30 kilometres (20 miles) from Maiduguri, but the risk is too high.
“If I could go back I would — I would have a big, big farm,”
he said.
“There is no way I can.”
Attempted return
Finding a way home for the displaced is seen as key to
solving the humanitarian crisis in northeast Nigeria.
After forcing the jihadists back to remote hideouts, the
government insists the security situation is stabilising.
But attacks persist outside heavily fortified towns.
Over just a few days in July, five soldiers were killed and
six aid workers kidnapped.
On Thursday, a Boko Haram raid killed at least two people in
a displaced camp near Maiduguri.
So far this year, 130,000 people have been displaced in
northeast Nigeria, the International Organization for Migration says.
Ibrahim Bukar, 48, is comparatively lucky.
The local government accountant still receives his official
salary of about $80 (75 euros) a month even though he has not worked in his
hometown Bama, 65 km from Maiduguri, since it was devastated by fighting more
than four years ago.
But the wage does not cover rent and he squats with his wife
and four children in the one-room servants’ quarters of an acquaintance’s
house.
Last October, after more than four years away, he decided to
go home.
“There was nothing,” he said.
“No food, no potable water, no health services, no teachers
— don’t even talk of electricity.”
Beyond the town, he said, you cannot travel safely for more
than a kilometre. After three months, Bukar gave up and headed back to
Maiduguri.
Camps still filling
The displaced camps are still filling up.
A sprawling site around the city’s main stadium opened in
March and has already reached its capacity with over 12,000 people.
Fatima Mohammed, 38, moved into a tarpaulin shelter three
weeks ago with her husband and two children.
She arrived from an overcrowded camp not far away, having
been displaced several times since being forced from her village five years
ago.
She has no idea if, or when, she will see home again.
“All depends on god — if there is peace I will go back
immediately,” she said.
“But if there is no peace then there is no way I can
return.”
AFP
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