• Plight of older men in aftermath of terror
• How farmers’ displacement accentuates food insecurity
How should one recall Bala Aliyu’s story? Like a dismal truth tucked within a mournful prose perhaps. Some may find in it a cautionary tale of how not to be a man in an age of jackals. But the 83-year-old would rather recount his past as the stuff of legend.
Once, in the biting chill of harmattan, Aliyu teased a smile from his beloved Larai, drawing warmth and the promise of romantic bliss.
Having earned her love and good graces, the rice farmer fancied the simple pleasures of raising a family with her. Nothing prepared him for the despair that would one day consume him.
Aliyu, who once caused his wife’s heart to melt, through the icy harmattan “of 1981” became “a good for nothing coward” on Tuesday, June 3, 2014.
On that day, the rice farmer became a postal icon of how not to be a husband. His fate altered in the exact moment that the first shot pierced through the calm of his family home in Attagara, in the remote tracts of Gwoza, Borno State.
The day Attagara split open
On Tuesday, June 3, 2014, Attagara split to a violence that would forever scar Aliyu and his people.
The rice farmer and his family were startled from the normalcy of their daily life as the terrorist group, Boko Haram, invaded their village in a retaliatory attack that led to the death of over 130 people.
The first gunshot rang as Larai cleansed their grandson, Ali, who had soiled his pants, in front of the house, and as Aliyu waited for her to be done, so that she could serve him his favourite cornmeal and stew.
After the first shot rang out, multiple shots followed and ricocheted closer to their home as the terror squad, disguised as soldiers of the Nigerian Army, burst into their premises shooting indiscriminately. Aliyu fled.
As the gunshots echoed through the air, Aliyu, then 73 years of age but surprisingly agile, fled into the wilderness. His legs, though weakened by age, found strength in the primal urge to survive.
Behind him, the lifeless bodies of his second wife Hafsatu, his son Musa, and grandson Ali, lay in a pool of blood. Musa, who was visiting with his newly married bride, sprawled astride the house’s main entrance, his skull split apart by terrorist bullets. Aliyu’s first grandchild, Ali, lay dead in a mixture of blood and fecal water, his chest torn apart by hot lead too. But his first wife, Larai, and third wife, Saratu, survived.
When home becomes a battlefield
Attagara, once a haven of peace, was transformed into a battlefield soaked with the blood of its inhabitants as the terror squad spared neither the old nor the young. They turned the village upside down and inside out, in a macabre siege that stifled the cries of the dying in the crackle of gunfire.
On June 1, 2014, Boko Haram had attacked a church in Attagara, killing nine people, but the villagers retaliated, killing many more militants. Two days later, the insurgents returned to punish Attagara.
The gunmen returned dressed in military uniforms convincing residents that they had come to provide protection after the attack two days earlier, on Sunday. They gathered the people in the centre of the village on the pretext of addressing them on safety measures, and when a sizeable crowd had gathered, they opened fire at the crowd. They shot indiscriminately and continuously, killing both young and old.
From the hills surrounding Gwoza, Aliyu and other survivors watched in horror as smoke billowed from the villages below. The once familiar and beloved landscape was now a desolate wasteland, where memories of happier times burned to ashes beneath the plumes of terror.
Gwoza, which shared boundaries with the terrifying Sambisa Forest, had suddenly scorched earth, its people trapped in a never-ending cycle of violence.
The bitter aftermath
Amidst the mayhem, Aliyu, surprisingly nimble for his age, fled leaving his two wives behind. Subsequently, he found refuge in Garwa, in Maroua, Cameroon’s Far North Region. From his hideout, he learned of the fate that had befallen his wives; neighbours told him that they had been taken as spoils of war by the invaders. This crushed him but he was powerless to act. His body was too frail to seek vengeance even as he silently bore the burden of his failure.
As he tried to piece together the fragments of his life, Aliyu was confronted by the bitter reality of lost love. Five months after their separation, his beloved Larai, moved on, cohabiting with another man.
“My wife blamed me for running away. But how could I have stayed? They were targeting all the men and boys. They didn’t care if you were old. They would simply kill you. Yet, Larai blamed me for everything. She called me a coward and accused me of causing the death of our son and only grandson…I was eager to take her back. We were not divorced but she said things had changed and she was with someone else,” the 83-year-old said, recalling the tragic evening, when he encountered his first love making a meal for another man, in a ramshackle tent in Maroua.
To his chagrin, Larai rejected him, and called him “a coward.” Thus deepening his heartache. In her eyes, he was no longer the man who had once made her smile in the harmattan, but a shadow of his former self, diminished by the spectre of his past.
A land stained with the blood of innocents
Gwoza, nestled 135 kilometers from Maiduguri, Borno’s capital, bears the scars of the Attagara massacre among so many others. The commune, once vibrant with life, now grapples with the aftershock of a decade-long nightmare, no thanks to Boko Haram.
The terrorist group invaded with bloody intent, laying waste to human lives and displacing thousanda of residents. The town flaunting scenic land tracts and hilly terrains that once promised serenity, now conceals deeply rooted fear.
Though the Nigerian military wrested the town from the grip of Boko Haram, one year after the Gwoza massacre, the victory feels hollow. The returnees, who dared return to their homes, find themselves caught in a limbo of terror and recurrent attacks. Every breath they draw, is laced with the fear of another attack, thus making existence there a continuous trial.
Since 2009, and with a cruel crescendo from mid-2013, the land has been stained with the blood of innocents. Boko Haram, with a cold and calculated cruelty, struck at the heart of the township, targeting schools, marketplaces, and places of worship. The precision with which they strike, the coordinated maneuvers, and the chilling efficiency of their assaults reveals an organised malevolence, a force that moves with the intent to crush all in its path.
In the first half of 2014 alone, violence claimed at least 2,053 civilians, felled in 95 merciless attacks in the northeast. The Human Rights Watch, in its grim estimate, chronicled these horrors, laying bare the extent of the carnage perpetrated across over 70 towns and villages, and even reaching the federal capital, Abuja.
Just say: ‘Yes sir!’
While the impact of the violence on children, women and the elderly accentuate in real time, the consequences for the elderly northern male is devastating yet ignored in plain sight.
It’s excruciating. Many old men, like young men and even boys, argued Balkis Ahmed, a Gusau-based trauma psychologist and social worker, suddenly find themselves on the receiving end. “They have become the disposable elements at the bottom of the totem pole,” she said.
In truth, several males in the region hitherto ensconced in cozy positions of patriarchs, family heads and providers, are hauled on to the fringes of existence. From the northeast town of Gwoza to the terror troves of the northwest the older male must adapt to a re-calibrated life cycle.
“It’s a bad time to be a man. If we cannot join the bandits or work for them as informants, we must run away or end up losing our lives,” said Aliyu Madachi, a displaced farmer and former resident of Shinkafa, in Zamfara State.
Corroborating him, a staff of the Zamfara State Emergency Management Services (SEMA), stated that the only rational option for most men is to flee with their families.
“Those who are too old or weak to flee are forced to live as captives in their own homes,” she said.
The Nation findings revealed that several villages and local councils are currently under siege by armed bandits. Residents of Dumburum in Zurmi, Badarawa in Shinkafi, Kizara in Tsafe and Dangulbi in Maru Local government areas, for instance, live under the persistent fear of attack and yoke of subjugation of notorious bandit leaders and their lieutenants.
“We know them. Many of them grew up here. But no one dares challenge them. The child whose nose you cleaned yesterday has grown into a bandit. When he comes to your home to rob you of your food and money, just give it all to him. Don’t challenge him. Just say, ‘Yes sir!’ Don’t give him the evil eye, if you do, might end up losing your life. He would gun you down. If he lays hand on your daughter or wife. Just say, ‘Yes sir!’ Pray that he finishes quickly and never comes back. Pray that he doesn’t take (abduct) them away. Whatever happens, stay alive. Be grateful,” said Mohammed Maru, a resident of Dansadau.
Men cuckolded by bandits
But gratitude would never cut it for Murtala Kanwuri. Bankrupt and displaced from his home in Gidan Baru, the 68-year-old cut the picture of a haunted man. At The Nation’s first encounter with him in 2021, Kanwuri looked distraught. His youngest wife, Usama, “is sleeping with his former herder,” Bilyaminu, an orphan he raised from childhood, he revealed.
Bilyaminu was entrusted in his care soon after he clocked 17 and his parents died in a road accident en route Bauchi. But the teenager has grown from a mild beneficiary pecking on superfluous affection into Kanwuri’s nemesis. “He joined bandits and stole from me. He is a cursed child,” said the 68-year-old.
A dark drawl of anguish rattled in his words. The resonance was unsettling. Sad, bitter words leapt from his lips and clung to the air with a nostalgic peal. Kanwuri heaved with heartbreak and resentment.
Through his narrative, Usama, his 18-year-old wife and caregiver, plucked blooms and young leaves from a herbal plant for sale at the local market. As she worked, she sang sonorously in her native dialect. The song, when translated, glorified the exploits of a legendary bandit, who stole from the rich to feed the poor.
Kanwuri cursed under his breath, uttering an oath, like an eerie groan. His blunted words threatened mishap for the singer and every armed bandit.
Aliyu, my translator, explained afterwards that Kanwuri believed that his wife sang to taunt him. Two days later, the 68-year-old recounted how marauding bandits abducted his two wives, right from under his roof. He dreaded their molestation of his youngest wife, Usama, in particular, because they were barely three months into their marriage. Kanwuri remembered them grabbing her and copping a feel of her supple body.
One of the bandits smacked Usama’s butts, saying her youth and beauty was wasted on an old man. Livid, Kanwuri shoved the molester and that earned him a severe beating. His 13-year-old son, Umar, sprang to his defense and in the consequent scramble, got stabbed and shot in the head.
The bandits made away with Kanwuri’s two wives. And even though the ransom he paid for their freedom bankrupted him, his first wife, Awa, packed her belongings and absconded from home, four days after her rescue. Usama, his youngest wife, however, stayed behind more out of pity than love, it would seem.
“Awa ran away to be with her forest husband (bandit). But me (sic) I stayed behind. He (Kanwuri) should show gratitude. No woman will marry him. He is too old, very weak and penniless,” said Usama.
Nonetheless Kanwuri accused her of unfaithfulness. He said, “Usama has become wayward with bandits. She is committing an abomination.” Initially, Kanwuri was acceptive of his situation, thinking his wife was the concubine of Dogo Gide, a notorious bandit terrorising Dansadau.
But he eventually discovered, through a neighbour’s mother-in-law, who got kidnapped and ransomed, that his wife wasn’t having an affair with Dogo Gide but with his herder turned bandit, Bilyaminu. Ever since, Kanwuri has been plotting his payback.
But at his age, there was little he could do. He had barely recovered from a stroke, which he suffered in June 2020, and he lacked the resources and influence to exact retribution. Findings revealed that Bilyaminu relocated to the forest since November 2020. He is one of the strongest members of a gang allegedly loyal to Dogo Gide.
Those whose wives part their thighs for mercy and a meal
There is no gainsaying several men like Kanwuri abide in Zamfara’s troubled crannies. Occasionally, their wives leave home, sometimes in a group, under the pretext of petty trading or begging for alms. Oftentimes, they return with food and money.
“Sometimes, they go overnight. What manner of trade or alms-seeking lasts from morning till dawn of the next day? It’s a terrible thing to happen to any man,” said Maru-based Lukman Mala, 89.
Eventually, some husbands learn to turn a deaf ear and a blind eye, bidding dawn to intrude apace and rid them of the tyrant imagery of their wives, whose ripped moans split their subconscious through the night.
Tsafe-based sweets hawker, Habibatu Mafara, stated that, “Some women do it for food and some do it for money.” And some wives cuckold their husbands as a gesture of personal sacrifice, she said.
Further investigations revealed that, some husbands, on discovery that they had been marked for death by bandits, who accuse them of giving up their informants to the military, become jittery. When this happens, the accused man either flees with his family or takes the initiative to approach the bandits, through a proxy, to plead for leniency.
In doing this, he must be ready to abide by the bandits’ terms: which could be a cash penalty or fine, or giving up his wife or wives for several nights in the bandits’ leader’s bed. Sometimes, the bandits visit the home of their victim and lay with his wives in his presence.
“They do this when they truly intend to humiliate the husband. Even so, they kill the man afterwards,” said Junaidu Lawali, from Shiya Galadima. Lawali admitted, however, that there had been instances whereby the wives seized the initiative to approach the bandits on their husbands’ behalf.
“Sometimes, a wayward wife could also collude with her lover among the bandits to force her husband to give her up as a comfort wife or concubine to her bandit beau. These things happen. Those bandits have ruined everything. They have destroyed too many families,” said Lawali.
Several men have been known to resign to wretchedness, bearing their grief like a secret shame. For instance, Kanwuri, during his chat with The Nation, did a great job hiding his misery until his eyes parted and peeled from the burden, spilling the rivulet of a prodigal tear.
Yet several men cling tenaciously to beloved visions of their wives. Whatsoever the circumstances, they appreciate their wives as life-savers, unwilling participants in a vulgar rite of atonement. To those whose wives do it for food, they are husbands to virtuous women parting their limbs for a meal in silent fury. The assumption of their wives’ discomfort, however, is a necessary performance of will – as the circumstances often vary.
Three cups of rice for three rounds of sex. A quart of cooking oil for three long nights in the fetid saddle of a menacing bandit often seems gross but acceptable. Sometimes, the bandit delegates the romp to a zealous underling. Especially when his bed is full with reputable villagers’ wives.
The husbands learn to keep a stiff upper lip. No sacrifice is too much as long it keeps them safe or their bellies full. Men silence their pride to stay alive. Women barter their honour to survive. It’s flipsides of the same coin.
A young groom was reportedly hacked to death by bandits in Gwashi, Bukkuyum LGA, while trying to prevent them from raping his wife on their wedding night. The remains of the newly-wedded young man was laid to rest in Gwashi.
An older man would simply turn a blind eye and maintain a stiff upper lip.
Armed banditry plaguing Zamfara and neighbouring northwestern states, Katsina and Sokoto has consumed more than 8,000 lives – mainly in Zamfara – with over 60,000 fleeing into Niger Republic in the last decade, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG).
Through the mayhem, livestock and crops have been decimated, further depressing human livelihood indices that were already the country’s lowest. Despite its economic potential, the North West has the highest poverty rate in Nigeria. As of 2019, all seven states in the zone had poverty levels above the national average of 40.1 per cent, led by Sokoto (87.7 per cent), Jigawa (87 per cent) and Zamfara (74 per cent).
The Great Unravelling
A quiet tragedy unfolds across the country’s terror-ravaged zones and IDP camps as elderly men who once stood tall as the pillars of their communities bemoan their reduction to shadows of their former selves.
Against the backdrop of their travails, Nigeria’s 220 million citizenry is ensnared in a cruel paradox. A staggering 84 million Nigerians, nearly 37 per cent of the population, are impoverished, their plight worsened by escalating conflicts, rampant inflation, and the unyielding scourge of climate change.
The nation’s food security is unraveling, with a harrowing forecast of 26.5 million people confronting acute hunger during the June-August 2024 lean season, a dramatic leap from the 18.6 million food-insecure individuals at the close of 2023, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). The North East, ravaged by ceaseless conflict, bears the greatest burden. Insurgency has displaced 2.2 million people and left 4.4 million food insecure across Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states, with Borno State—epicentre of the turmoil—housing three million of the displaced.
The twin scourges of insurgency and environmental upheaval have affected agricultural productivity as elderly farmers desert vast acres of fertile lands, deepening the plight of rural populations whose daily survival once depended on peasant farming.
Their plight casts a dark pall over food security. Uprooted by violence, their agricultural wisdom is lost to their children and the teeming youths who are further alienated from the farmlands.
The consequences are dire. Scarcity of staple crops has driven food prices skyward, making once-affordable staples out of reach for many. This disruption strains the economy and also exacerbates the suffering of the vulnerable, particularly women and children, who face heightened food and nutrition insecurity.
In essence, the displacement of Nigeria’s elderly farmers symbolises a broader crisis, threatening the very foundation of Nigeria’s food security. As they are driven further from their fields, the land itself mourns its abandonment by the experienced hands that once nurtured it.
Yet as Nigeria’s humanitarian efforts focus on the most visible victims—women, children, and the young—older men are left to navigate the desolate landscape of displacement camps, where their authority is stripped, their needs neglected, and their voices silenced.
The silent erosion of life, dignity
According to the UNCHR (2015), elderly IDPs frequently experience inadequate psychological, physical, economic, and social support. And the World Health Organisation (W.H.O) notes that they show higher rates of coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer, respiratory diseases, and rheumatism.
Consequently, the global burden of disease database highlights that comprehensive healthcare services are vital to address issues like high blood pressure, high body mass index, unsafe sex, household air pollution, and alcohol use, which contribute to morbidity, mortality, and disability in those over 60 (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, 2015).
Within the confines of the IDP camps, older men, once the guardians of their households, are now relegated to the background. The traditional roles they once held with pride have been dismantled, leaving them to grapple with the harsh reality of their new existence. Mercy Igoh, a social care worker, lamented the oversight, stating that many older men, who were once the backbone of their families, are now invisible to the humanitarian agencies. Their wives on the other hand are empowered with seed funds to start a business. The men’s needs are overlooked, and they are left to fend for themselves in a world that no longer values them.
For many of these men, the loss of their homes constitutes both a physical displacement but a profound existential crisis. The power they once wielded within their families has been taken away, leaving them vulnerable to the scorn of those they once protected. Consequently, stories of broken authority abound across IDP camps.
The erosion of male authority within the camps has led to a bitter backlash. Gimba Jalle, a 68-year-old elder, recounted the painful reality of his wife’s rebellion: “When a man can no longer provide for his family, he becomes worthless in their eyes. My wife, once loyal, now rebels against me. The humanitarian workers have incited her against me. She even sleeps with younger men, and I am powerless to stop her. My late wife, Hafsatou, Allah bless her, was very kind. Until she died, she never misbehaved to me. She was very sick and couldn’t perform her bedroom duties with me but she always counselled her younger co-wife, Hassanatu to respect me. Several times, she intervened to make her perform her duty (have sex) with me. But since Lami died, things got worse.”
For Jalle and others like him, the camps have become prisons of shame, where the very fabric of their identity is torn apart.
Mohammedu Giro, an esteemed elder of Gabari in Bama LGA, Borno State, recalled with a heavy heart on the erosion of paternal authority in the face of loss. Once, his youngest and only surviving son, Ibrahim, held him in reverence, the promise of a rich inheritance binding the boy to the wisdom of his father’s counsel. But when Giro’s fortunes crumbled, so too did the son’s respect. In a bitter encounter, the 14-year-old defied his father, clutching a wrap of marijuana. Reacting to his father’s chastisement of his narcotic addiction, the teenager spat: “You have nothing left to leave us!” Thus shattering the last vestige of Giro’s authority.
Giro, now 76, laments the harshness of the present, as poverty strips him of parental dignity. He recalled a time of abundance, when his lands stretched far and wide, and his cattle, over 700 strong, grazed contentedly under his watch. His grain stores were full, and his wealth flowed through a network of agents and traders that spanned from Maiduguri to Adamawa. He was a man of means, respected and revered. But the ravages of displacement have reduced him to a shadow of his former self.
The humanitarian blind spot
While humanitarian efforts are rightly focused on the most vulnerable—women, children, and the young—older men are often left to suffer in silence. Sule Lamedu, paramedic and camp administrator, explained the rationale: “Experience has shown that without strict measures, men would hoard resources, leaving their wives and children to starve. I witnessed a case in Muna Dalti where a man starved his pregnant wife, hoarding food for himself. We had to remove her with security help and transfer her to a registered camp, where she received proper food and postnatal care. Lamedu noted that many men, regardless of age, try to dominate their wives while failing as providers and protectors, often denying their displaced reality. But in our zeal to protect the vulnerable, we have neglected the older men, who also need our support,” he said.
The focus on empowering women and children, while necessary, has unintentionally marginalised the older male population, leaving them without the help they desperately need, he said.
While expert psychologists, like Dr. Abubakar Monguno, whose team authored a report on remedial trauma support to victims of violence, have urged the government and other humanitarian actors to enhance service provision to female survivors of violence. Further intervention could ultimately ensure that more survivor-centred services are extended to affected boys, young men and most especially, older men. The support efforts should also integrate social workers into health clinics, communities and IDP camps where aging demographics are identified at risk of breakdown.
But that is in the long run. In the short run, urgent steps must be taken to assist victims like Aliyu, Kanwuri and Giro to pick up the broken pieces of their lives. To many, their struggles blend into the hobbling steps of the north’s brutal re-awakening. Their collective fate, however, resonates a tragedy so overpowering that it becomes a torrent of feelings.
Beyond that, there is guilt; that our concern for IDPs is so constrained and streamlined that it sets the society, like a bird of prey, to alienate them and make light of their buried narratives.
In their sad, sorry world, every muted anguish or poignant recall pricks their minds and sinks like claws. There is no closure. There is only loss.
