No one in the Borno State-run internally displaced persons\u2019 Gubio Camp has died from starvation yet but residents say it is a miracle and hundreds \u2013 if not thousands \u2013 will die shortly if they do not get food.<\/p>\n
Children, the ill \u2013 especially in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic \u2013 and the elderly are most at risk.<\/p>\n
The camp, which is about 16km outside Maiduguri, was opened in 2015 and houses IDPs from\u00a0 Abadam, Bama, Kala Balge, Gwoza, Konduga, Kukawa, Jere, Marte, Monguno, Ngala and Nganzai, among others, including some from Nigeria\u2019s close neighbour countries.<\/p>\n
The IDPs were forced from their hometowns by persistent deadly attacks by insurgents, first by members of the Jam\u0101\u2019at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da\u2019way Wa\u2019l-Jih\u0101d (JAS), better known as Boko Haram, and later from its splinter group, the Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP).<\/p>\n
The camp is home to about 30,000 IDPs.<\/p>\n
RNI reporter Fatima Grema Modu spoke to two residents, who confirmed that many, if not most, of the camp\u2019s residents were at risk of dying from starvation, adding that some were already \u201cvery close to dying of hunger\u201d.<\/p>\n
They said the residents had no help from the government or non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for at least three months.<\/p>\n
IDP Ari Malam Fatori said: \u201cWe face extreme hunger on a daily basis and it is difficult to survive. We send some of the children outside the camp, and even some of the women, to beg in the streets. Some of the women sell groundnuts if they have any but they get only about \u20a6200 for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe men do not have a job and sometimes we go outside the camp to find and fetch wood. But it\u2019s dangerous and, even if we get wood, there is no food to cook. We prefer to stay in the camp where we are safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Falmata Mele said: \u201cEvery day it becomes more difficult to survive. Most times when we go out to beg, we don\u2019t get enough money to buy food and, if we don\u2019t get anything, we go to sleep hungry. If things continue like this we are going to die. Many people are already sick.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alhaji Mustapha Ali, the chairman of the camp, confirmed that residents had not received food assistance from anyone for the past three months and most of the IDPs were starving.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor more than week now, I have been contacting and trying to follow up with officials. I told them the IDPs were desperately hungry and had not received food from either the government or NGOs. Some men go out to get wood but there\u2019s no food to cook even if they find it. It is the ill, the old and children who are most at risk of dying. It is hard to live without food for three days, let alone three whole months.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said many of the IDPs had resorted to begging but said it was dangerous for the children who might get run over or hit by a car and the women were exposed to the added danger from men offering them money for sex.<\/p>\n
\u201cEarlier the government allowed the World Food Programme (WFP) to distribute food to the residents. But then the WFP stopped delivering food. When we asked them why, they told us the government had directed them to stop. They promised to resume distributing food when the government gave them permission.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ali pleaded with the government to help the IDPS. \u201cThe government should please look into the plight of these people and provide much-needed foodstuff. And, if they refuse, they should at least help the residents to return to their communities where they could try to make a living and feed their families.\u201d<\/p>\n
The IDPs said they had asked the public to help them, saying their lives were in the balance if they did not receive food urgently.<\/p>\n
AISHA JAMAL<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No one in the Borno State-run internally displaced persons\u2019 Gubio Camp has died from starvation yet but residents say it is a miracle and hundreds \u2013 if not thousands \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":16345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanitarian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21993"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21993"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26842,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21993\/revisions\/26842"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}