By Olatunji Ololade
RAMA IDRISU is a toughie. Gangraped at 13. Married and widowed at 14; the severe planes of her face, military erectness of her tenor, and the snarl that steals into her voice, all give irresistible defiance to her poise.
Now 15, she recalls the death of her first child, Muhammad, to “dehydration” as a very painful episode in her life.
“He barely lived on to his fourth day,” she said, adding that when he died, she “could not cry immediately.” Perhaps because he was born of rape and forced marriage to Abubakr, a Boko Haram insurgent.
When Rama cried, she could not tell if she cried for having “shuttled hell back and forth to bear him,” or because she truly loved him.
The 15-year-old lost Muhammad three days after she delivered him on a bed of sand and wild reeds. She went into premature labour “in the bush,” soon after fleeing captivity from Boko Haram (BH)’s stronghold and training camp in Gobarawa, along Damboa, Madagali and Algarno axis.
By the time she went into labour, she had travelled for days, without water.
“I ran and crawled through forest and sand for four days. I put to bed on the fifth day. Maira, my fellow escapee and ‘co-wife’ to my late Boko Haram husband, took delivery of my child. The older women hurried away to avoid being recaptured by insurgents, who were hot on our heels.
“My tongue was parched. My mouth was dry. I couldn’t produce enough spittle to swallow. I almost choked to death. But Alhamdulillah, I delivered him, only to lose him on the fourth day. He died before we got to town and I buried him under a pile of leaves and stone. My hands were too weak to dig him a proper grave. Allah gives and Allah takes,” she said.
The 15-year-old soaked blood and fluid off her body and newborn, with her wrapper and scarf, due to the
extreme circumstances in which she bore him.
“I had to wait for my wrapper to dry in the sun, before I wrapped him in it. While it dried in the sun, Maira (her midwife), lent me her niqab to enshroud my child,” she said.
Unlike Rama, Hauwa experienced somewhat better fate, perhaps. Although she was neither abducted nor strongarmed into marrying a BH insurgent, every day, she stirs to the hazards of a life borne of uttermost denial, in Pulka.
Hauwa lacks access to primal necessities, like food, decent shelter and water supply.
Since she fled Bama in the wake of Boko Haram’s persistent attacks on her neighbourhood, Hauwa has been forced to live a life of drudgery, “scavenging for food, toiletries and water on the streets of Maiduguri.”
Access to safe drinking water has been a major problem in war-ravaged communities of the northeast. In Pulka, for instance, water levels are around eight-litres per person, far below the minimum 50 litres per person recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Due to the intense water scarcity in the area, several residents have
migrated from their villages in search of safe havens with more stable water deposits.
The extreme lack of water forced Abubakar Shilka, 38, to leave the IDP camp in Pulka with surviving members of his family.
“Boko Haram killed my two sons for refusing to join them. Now, I am left with two wives and seven girls. We couldn’t get enough water anywhere…Women need water to cook; they need water to bathe and handle their toiletries.We had to leave for Maiduguri. They said it is easier to get water over here,” he said.
But since their arrival in Maiduguri, Shilka and his family have been forced to seek alms on the street, mostly to buy food and water.
“It is difficult to get water in the IDP camps in Maiduguri. There are too many mouths and jerry cans jostling for the little they serve on the camps. We have to try our luck on the streets,” he said.
Shilka sits in the shade and supervises from a distance, as his wives and daughters beg for money on the streets of Maiduguri.
“It’s easier for women. People are more inclined to give girls and
nursing mothers money, among other things,” he claimed.
Besides the likelihood of endangering his family on the busy highways, Shilka dreads the possibility of pushing his wives and daughters into adultery.
“Once, a restaurateur tried to sleep with my wife around the Customs area. She had taken my daughter to him to beg for water and food but he requested to sleep with her, promising to give her 50 litres of water,” he said.
In Muna Dalti, residents of a makeshift, unofficial IDP camp lamented hostility from neighbourhood communties. Hajara, 34, complained that the locals prevented her and fellow IDPs from fetching water from the neighbourhood well.
“They accused us of coming to pollute their water. They said we had come to poison it. But sometimes, we only need a little to drink. Once, I had to show them my four-year-old, who was severely dehydrated but they chased me away with sticks and machete. Towards nightfall, an old woman gave me pure water (sachet water) but it was too late. My child died before dawn,” she sobbed.
More harrowing stories resonate across the northeast, where displaced folks grapple with severe water scarcity. As the threat of BH attacks diminish, in the wake of sustained military offensives against the terrorist group, hundreds of people in the region throng the IDP camps to escape drought and conflicts over water.
Mohamed Liman is one such IDP. He fled with his wife, elderly mother, and eight children, including his one-year-old son, from Cross Kauwa, a village more than 150 kilometres northeast of Maiduguri, to an ICRC operated IDP camp.
A lingering water tragedy
The current water scarcity in the region is partly due to BH activities. According to UNICEF, the insurgency has damaged or destroyed 75 per cent of the water infrastructure across northeast Nigeria, which is home to over 24 million people. “Water and sanitation systems have been attacked, damaged or left in disrepair to the point of collapse,” said UNICEF’s Global Chief of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene last year.
However, underlying the crisis is climate change. In the last 50 years, Lake Chad, which used to be the main source of freshwater for 40 million people in the wider region, has almost completely disappeared. Once the size of Rwanda, 90 per cent of the lake has dried up in just a few decades, contributing to widespread environmental change.
Back in 2008, before Boko Haram became a threat, the UN Environment Programme warned: “The changes in the lake have contributed to local lack of water, crop failures, livestock deaths, collapsed fisheries, soil salinity, and increasing poverty throughout the region.”
These dynamics have worsened since, making people’s lives and livelihoods much harder and unpredictable. Added to the conflict, this has contributed to a situation in which 10.7 million people in the Lake Chad Basin are now in need of humanitarian assistance. About 8.5 million of these, according to the UN, are in northeast Nigeria.
Following the re-establishment of Nigerian forces in some locations in the region, about 1.7 million individuals have returned to their communities since August 2015. However, the infrastructure in these areas is still severely damaged or destroyed and essential services have not been restored. People in Gwoza town, for instance, spend several hours a day under the scorching sun searching for water, often in unsafe, hand-dug wells. The lack of infrastructure leaves no other option.
As the strain on water resources aggravates and it becomes increasingly difficult to get water, many have deserted their homes for more habitable communities in neighbouring states and, sometimes, beyond Nigeria’s borders.
About 36,000 Nigerians have crossed into Cameroon in recent weeks following an
upsurge in violence around Rann. Having arrived in the village of Garoua in Cameroon’s far northwest, they are in urgent need of food, shelter and water, warns international medical organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which has launched an emergency response.
“They left on foot very early in the morning – women, children and elderly people. When they fled, they had to leave elderly and sick relatives behind. They brought along what possessions they could, but in Garoua, they have nothing to drink and nowhere to sleep. They have been left to fend for themselves,” said Dr. Silas Adamou Moussa, MSF deputy programme manager for emergencies.
This is not the first time that people from Rann have had to flee to Cameroon. The first time, some of them returned home after having fled, but not this time. They don’t want to go back to Rann unless they know they can live safely, yet their future here is also uncertain. They are afraid. Their children are afraid,” said Moussa.
Some eventually find their way back to the IDP camps, joining hundreds of thousands dependent on severely stretched water facilities.
The influx of IDPs seeking humanitarian relief due to water shortages pose an ugly reality, at the backdrop of government intervention and humanitarian relief efforts.
This elicits fears among IDPs, who have become even more wary of returning home to dire conditions.
Many IDPs, who were already contemplating a return back home to their villages, are forced to reconsider their options, given the spate at which many, who had gone back home earlier, are returning to the IDP camps.
“They bring back horrific stories of bad farmlands, insecurity and water scarcity. How are we expected to return to live in such dire conditions?” lamented Adamu Dalhiru, who fled from Baga to Maiduguri, following BH attacks on his community in 2014.
In Monguno, Ibrahim Bakir, a fresh returnee from Baga and resident of the GDSS camp, cited extreme strain on water resources and insecure farmlands as his reasons for fleeing his community seven months after he returned home.
Fragile ecosystems and climate change
A meteorological analysis of the situation in the region states that the damming of the rivers and the dumping of refuse on water channels are among the causative factors of the northeast water crisis.
Sparse rainfall and rising temperature, especially during the hot, dry season has been responsible for the drought and drying up of rivers afflicting the region. This has led to the invasion of vegetation and water rich communities by Boko Haram. It has also led to a situation whereby locals rise in arms against each other in turf, pasture wars.
Familiar problems – relating to land and water use, obstruction of traditional migration routes, livestock theft and crop damage – tend to trigger these disputes. But their roots run deeper.
Drought and desertification have degraded pastures, dried up many natural water sources across Nigeria’s far-northern Sahelian belt and forced large numbers of herders to migrate south in search of grassland and water for their herds.
Herders migrating into the savannah
and rain forests of the central and southern states are moving into regions where high population growth over the last four decades has heightened pressure on farmland, increasing the frequency of disputes over crop damage, water pollution and cattle theft.
In the absence of mutually accepted mediation mechanisms, these disagreement increasingly turn violent.
There is no gainsaying that an extreme interplay of conflict and climate change poses adverse effect on the northeast’s agricultural economy.
In Doron Baga, for instance, farming was practised throughout the year, before the conflict.
This is because the distance from the community to the lake is less than one kilometre, providing an enabling environment for farmers to practise both wet and dry season farming.
From March to May, the water in the Lake Chad recedes, hence allowing farmers to plant maize and beans along the shores of the river (recession agriculture). From April to June, farmers in Doron Baga practise irrigation farming, cultivating crops like onion, garden egg, sweet pepper, water melon, cabbage and tomatoes. From June to September, rain-fed agriculture is practised. Before the conflict, lean season was hardly experienced, as crops were cultivated all year round; fishermen could go as far as 100 kilometers on the Lake Chad fishing near Cameroun, Niger and Chad.
At the moment, fishermen can only fish as far as 5 to 6 kilometers in the waters, on any day. Although, there is no restriction to accessing the lake, government forces cannot guarantee their safety beyond a perimeter of 5 to 6 kilometers; a familiar refrain by security operatives to the natives reportedly goes thus: “If you go beyond, you are on your own.” According to the population, fishing activities have reduced by 80 to 90 per cent.
Subsistence agriculture and livestock farming are the most common livelihoods in most parts of the Lake Chad region, with a great dependence on deteriorating ecosystems. With the population of the region expected to double over the next 30 years, there will be an increased demand for water for agriculture, industrial development, and human consumption.
This pressure comes on top of decades of steadily declining agricultural productivity in the region, as climate change, demographic pressures, and mismanagement of scarce water resources have created what the UN describes as an “ecological catastrophe.”
Lake Chad’s surface area is now barely a tenth of what it was in 1963, eroding the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of families. Because most people of the region lack the education or skills for anything other than farming, livestock rearing and fishing, there are few alternative sources of income – other than migration. Even for those with some education or skills, there are no industries to absorb them.
Thus in the heat of the conflict and with very little options left to them, many of them are deserting their communities for safer havens within and outside Nigeria.
Harrowing reality in the outbacks
Harrowing stories of new arrivals to IDP camps suggest high levels of deprivation in inaccessible areas. Nutrition screenings for new arrivals reveal that the nutrition situation of children coming from inaccessible areas is significantly worse than that of children in areas receiving assistance.
For example, from August to November 2018, 4,663 children of 6-59 months, who are considered new arrivals to major centres, were screened by nutrition partners. Around 72 per cent of the screened children, according to UNOCHA, departed from areas that are considered inaccessible to international humanitarian partners; 41 per cent of the children from inaccessible areas are considered acutely malnourished – 24 per cent are considered severely malnourished.
This, revealed the humanitarian agency, compares to only 14 per cent of the children from accessible areas that have acute malnutrition. These stories of hunger and deprivation are reflective of the 2018 displacement patterns in the north-east where thousands of women, men, girls and boys fled from inaccessible areas as a result of the desperate situation.
HRP to the rescue?
Udoma Udo Udoma, Minister of Budget and National Planning, argued that President Muhammadu Buhari has prioritised the defeat of Boko Haram and stabilisation of the northeast for the inhabitants.
Besides joint military operations, the latest initiative is the 2019 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP), which is to enable the government offer rapid and effective solutions to the plight of the people of that region.
The HRP is part of a three-year strategy (2019 – 2021) evolved through a multistakeholder approach under the coordination of the Ministry of Budget and National Planning, in collaboration with donors, to address the needs and challenges of the affected population.
It was developed in close consultation with the governments of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states and has been endorsed by the conference on the Lake Chad Region (Oslo II), which took place in Berlin on September 3 and 4, 2018.
The conference was co-hosted by Nigeria, Germany, Norway and the United Nations. During the event, stakeholders working on humanitarian assistance, crisis prevention, stabilisation, and development came together to identify shared challenges and opportunities.
An agreement was reached to continue collaborating through a multi-year approach towards addressing the needs and challenges of the Lake Chad region in a sustainable manner. At the event, the sum of USD$ 2.17 billion multi-year funding was pledged for the Lake Chad region; the largest share of which was allocated to Nigeria.
The funding and plan, argued Udoma, is well aligned with the government’s effort to bring back normalcy and prosperity to the northeast.
Current HRP data projection suggests, that, the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance in the three most-affected states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe will reduce from 7.7 million in 2018 to 7.1 million in 2019.
Whilst such slight reduction in the numbers requiring assistance indicate minimal effect of intervention efforts, the large numbers of persons still needing assistance constitutes an eyesore. More significantly, it highlights the magnitude of the task ahead in confronting and resolving the humanitarian challenges of the northeast.
As the government and stakeholders return to the drawing board, let them be guided by the fate of badly bruised girls like Rama.
Rama’s woes took flight from a parched tongue. Two years ago, she was abducted by BH insurgents in the company of her friends, while they travelled 12 km to a neighbouring village to fetch water.
Ever since, Rama has hustled through several phases of hell. Hell was, getting abducted to live as Boko Haram’s sex slave at the tender age of 13. Hell was, being forcibly married to Abubakr, a BH commander. It’s also hellish remembering that her son died because her breasts could not produce enough milk to nourish him.
Today, Rama experiences a different kind of hell: the lack of a decent house to live in, three-square meals and clean, stable water supply. Now pregnant with another child, she would rather roam as a destitute person along Maiduguri’s fringe communities, than suffer the ordeal of life on an IDP camp.
“There is too little food and water to go round on those camps. I can’t survive on their tiny rations,” she said, in the tenor of a girl for whom each day unfurls like a poisonous flower.
In Rama’s world, the reality of babbling brooks and springs fade like grey dots in the scorched landscape. Yet prospects of their attainment invade her dreams like the clingiest burqa.