No Success in War Against Boko Haram, Says Doctors Without Borders

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) otherwise called Doctors Without Borders has stated that there is no visible success recorded in the ongoing war against insurgency in the North-east region.

MSF said: “Ten years of violence and displacement, the conditions still remain dire, and humanitarian needs remain unmet in North-eastern Nigeria.

“It has been 10 years since the insurgency began in the region with armed opposition groups fighting the Nigerian army. A decade on, the conflict is far from over.”

It further said: “People continue to be forced out from their homes by the violence while many displaced families now live in camps either operated by the state authorities or informally set up alongside local communities.

“The majority of the displaced are women and children and are heavily depending on humanitarian assistance for survival. It is estimated that 1.8 million people have been displaced across the North-eastern states of Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe.”

MSF, while noting that it began responding to North-east crisis in 2014, said: “Since 2009, increasing levels of insecurity and forced displacement have continued to disrupt people’s lives in Borno State,” lamenting that the wider humanitarian response was slow.

It recalled that in 2016, it raised the alarm in Bama, Borno State, as teams there witnessed high levels of malnutrition, lamenting that “although the amount of humanitarian aid has increased in the past few years, gaps in support for displaced communities have not been adequately addressed. Many areas of Borno State still remain very insecure today, which makes providing assistance difficult.”

The group noted that “humanitarian workers can only work in so-called ‘garrison towns’, enclaves controlled by the Nigerian military, and cannot access other areas outside military control. But even within the garrison towns, the needs of people remain unmet. This has forced some people to leave the relative safety of the camps, risking their lives outside the security perimeter to seek out food and firewood.”

It equally lamented that “in the formal camps, restrictions on freedom of movement undermine opportunities for self-reliance, and prevent people from farming or growing crops, making them heavily dependent on humanitarian assistance for survival. This is compounding the long-term physical and psychological traumas of having lived through a decade of violence.

 “In the informal camps, people are crammed on to small patches of land, with little infrastructure or humanitarian support to ensure their basic needs are met. Many families sleep in tiny huts made of plastic sheets or torn-up clothing and fabric, unable to withstand even brief spells of rain.”

In the statement issued yesterday, MSF quoted 40-year-old Lami Mustapha as saying: “Since we arrived in this camp eight months ago, we haven’t had any latrines to use. We all have been defecating in the open-usually running to the nearby bush.”

Mustapha said she has been living in an informal camp in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, with her eight children.

Another woman, Rabi Musa, a 50-year-old mother of 10 children, was also said to have said life at the informal camp was not easy.

She added: “We all have to beg, including my children, and work menial jobs to survive. There is no assistance coming our way.”

Yakura Kolo, 30, living with five children in a camp for displaced people, was said to have lamented that “in the past six years, I’ve been forced to move three times. The first two times I was fleeing violent attacks, and the third time was because of difficult living conditions.”

MSF said: “In Maiduguri, an influx of displaced people from the region has led to the population doubling from one to two million. While most of the aid agencies and humanitarian aid are concentrated here, the needs are massive, but health services still do not have enough resources.”