•Is Nigeria’s humanitarian crisis a meal ticket to UN agencies, other NGOs?
There is a formula for writing the story of the northeast. If you are a Nigerian journalist, you stick to the script. You are expected to fawn and grope through lattices of horror and contrived appreciation to present a humane story, often tailored to funding needs, schema, politics and administrative ego of United Nations’ multilateral agencies and other international non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
You may be tame or sensational in your reports but whatever you do, do not reveal the fraudulence and rot characterizing international NGOs.
Not a few journalists are familiar with the process; perhaps they are too awestruck by patronage from the NGOs hence you never get to read of the decadence across dystopic expanses of Konduga, Muna Dalti, and other Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps managed by UN agencies in Borno and the northeast region.
A recent fire outbreak in Muna Dalti revealed the extent of the agencies’ complicity in endangering the lives of Borno IDPs. The magnitude of the loss makes you wonder what the UN agencies in the state, particularly the one responsible for sheltering refugees, do with outrageous funding for shelter that it receives.
The fire completely razed the camp. A personal tour revealed that the tents burned faster because they were built with sticks, rubber and nylon sheets. The dwellings are fit to house animals yet Nigerians were forced to dwell in them. Do UN agencies receive outrageous dollar funding to house IDPs like fowls?
Adding insult to injury, UN agencies and other NGOs’ internal press teams interview victims of such disasters and take ‘touching’ pictures of them that project their funding needs and political agenda.
Sometimes, they enable their journalist friends from abroad to take the pictures and even contribute in no small measure to actualising preferred shots. They consider as fair game, anything that glorifies their work, criminalises local government (often deservedly) and substantiates their extreme claims for material and financial support.
One such picture could be of several tiny hands (of kids) eating from a bowl of badly done rice mixed with stones. The fraudulence of the shot subsists in the portion of stones in the food. Yopu get the feeling that the stones were deliberately added to the food to achieve impact. Who does that?
It is instructive to note that Nigerian journalists are hardly given the privilege of taking such shots, except they are contracted to do so by aid agencies. The UN’s agencies for instance, accord such privilege only to their internal media teams or foreign (often Caucasian) journalists from abroad. You could be forgiven for imagining racist undertones to such act.
Five years ago, while on a visit to the Garwa refugee camp in Maroua, Cameroon’s Far North Region, I witnessed the extremities endured by Nigerians fleeing Boko Haram’s onslaught from Banki, northeast Nigeria, into Cameroon. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) administrators of the camp tossed fragments of bread to hundreds of starving refugees, who shoved and fell over each other to grab portions of the loaves. For each lucky refugee, a portion was equal to a bite.
Of course, they were livid that I witnessed the situation. They tried to frustrate me from doing my work but for the governor of Maroua, who facilitated my access into the camp afterwards.
While UN authorities would argue that they can only do so much with ‘inadequate’ resources, is it also due to resource inadequacy that UNHCR staff tossed bread at starving IDPs like animals? There were more humane and dignified methods to feed the starving refugees but UNHCR officials opted to feed them like guinea fowls.
Just recently, Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State accused UN agencies of alleged misappropriation of about $334 million (N133.6 billion) meant for “humanitarian interventions and assistance” for Boko Haram victims in the state and north-east sub-region.
He made the allegation while receiving the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA)’s Deputy Regional Director for West and East Africa, Beatrice Mutali, at the Government House in Maiduguri, Borno’s capital.
Shettima lamented that the crisis is grossly misrepresented and exploited by humanitarian workers. He accused NGOs of splurging on bullet proof vehicles from intervention fund and operating in the northeast without any concrete and visible relief on displaced persons. He also alleged that more than 500 U.N. workers had invaded Maiduguri, the Borno state capital, and that their presence and expenditures are “questionable” given their lack of impact on some of the two million refugees in the state.
Of course, Borno officials are also been found complicit in sex for food scandals, theft and other crimes on IDP camps. One would think that the situation would improve over the years but it gets worse. A recent encounter with shady and very hostile staff of international NGOs in Konduga, Borno State, further attests to the loathsomeness and detachment characterising relief workers’ relationship with IDPs. It’s far removed from what you see in cozy humanitarian reports.
At the Konduga IDP centres managed by UN agencies and collaborating NGOs, minors share rubber tents with the elderly; the poor, helpless souls huddle together at the mercy of the elements through heat and rain, cloudbursts and sandstorms.
The officials in the camp almost lynched me and broke my camera. They claimed I didn’t obtain permission from them before speaking with IDPs even after showing them a pass granted by state authorities. They were actually worried that I would speak with IDPs who would reveal the true situation in the camp – which was deplorable. They would rather I spoke with IDPs handpicked by the; the ones who wouldn’t reveal that they managed the camp like a pig farm.
It is noteworthy that perpetrators of such wickedness to IDPs are often black Africans comprising Nigerians and fellow Africans. This is certainly a practical ploy by Caucasian managers of the agencies, who believe that the dirty work should be done by the IDPs’ compatriots. This shields Caucasian staff of the agencies from likely criticism and accusations of inhumanity. There is asides lopsided employment regimes and benefits unevenly instituted between local and international staff of UN agencies among others.
The malady subsists at the backdrop of fraud and embezzlement of funds within UN agencies. A 133-page examination of “fraud detection, prevention and response” across 28 organizations in the U.N.’s network, carried out by members of the organisation’s Joint Inspection Unit (JIU), for instance, revealed that the UN simply ignores fraud committed by its staff.
This casts a suspicious shade on the UN’s $1bn (£800m) humanitarian response plan launched in partnership with the Nigerian government recently. But while Peter Lundberg, deputy humanitarian coordinator for the UN in Nigeria claimed it is to help prevent the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians over the coming 12 months, President Muhammadu Buhari accuses the UN of exaggerating the humanitarian crises.
