REPORTER’S DIARY: Tasteless meals, gagged voices, ban on sex… life inside a Yola IDP camp

Going to Yola, Adamawa state, with plans to visit as many internally displaced persons (IDPs) as possible presented a number of expectations – to see men and women, boys and girls trying to reclaim their humanity after surviving the torture of insurgency.

I expected to see a government putting its foot on the ground to make life better for the IDPs, to hear a few harrowing experiences with shades of hope. All these I saw. But ‘rancour over sex ban’? I was unprepared for this.

FRUSTRATED CLEARANCE

On arrival at Yola, our first port of call was the national youth service corps (NYSC) camp in Damare, currently used as an IDP camp.

When we (my guide and I) got there, we were warmly welcomed by the national emergency management agency (NEMA). Once we introduced ourselves and informed them of our mission on the camp, they became defensive. They said we could not interact with any of the IDPs, saying any information we needed would be be provided by the officials.

We were given a brief rundown of the camp thus far. The camp was established on August 24, 2014, following a wild outbreak by Boko Haram.

“The population of the IDP is usually dynamic, because at times you have an increase in the IDP number and at times the number would drop. Some of these IDPs would leave willingly,” one of the officials said.

“We could note that between November-December last year, we had about 6,000 IDPs here, but at a point between March, we had 4,262. The figure has now dropped again, because of the success of the military in curbing insurgency; it is now 2,024.”

If we needed anything else, we were told, we had to seek official clearance.

We spoke with Sanni Datti, spokesman of the Adamawa state emergency management agency (ADSEMA), in a bid to get necessary clearance to interact with IDPs. The soft-spoken Datti said it was not in his place to grant the clearance, and advised us to speak with Saad Bello, the camp’s coordinator.

Saad Bello promised to be with us in “10 minutes”. One thing Yola taught us – when a public official tells you 10 minutes, please get a bed!

Ten minutes ran out, one hour went too quickly, and a few hours ran by, but we never saw the coordinator. We would later learn he was held down by more pressing issues about the newly-rescued girls. We retreated for the day.

The next morning, we headed for the state secretariat, where we tendered letters and identification for clearance as requested. Our clearance was denied by Hamman Furo, ADSEMA’s executive secretary, who said the IDPs were recovering from the “trauma of captivity”.

In fairness to the officials, they were willing to speak with us, as most of them did, but they just wanted to avoid the interaction with IDPs. They said they were “protecting the rights” of the IDPs.

GAGGING A THOUSAND VOICES

Before we retreated the first day, we spoke with Alhaji Madu, the IDP chairman, who was also displaced from Gwoza in August 2014 when Boko Haram struck the town. He explained the challenges of his position as head of the IDPs.

“We cannot say there are no challenges; there are a number of challenges. The management is challenging, the food is not tasty; some of the IDPs can’t eat the food. If you go into the camp, you’d see food wasting – IDPs can’t eat it,” he said.

“When NEMA and ADSEMA (SEMA) give us food items, we cook by ourselves, but no condiments…”

As he went on, he was interrupted by a NEMA official who said condiment provision was the duty of ADSEMA, not NEMA. He added that despite this, ADSEMA was still providing the necessary condiments.

“There is condiment, but maybe not just enough. There are rules; the condiments are provided by SEMA, while ADSEMA provides condiments. We produce the actual food and non-food items,” he said.

“They are trying their best. Like I told you earlier on, there’s no way you can get 100 percent of what you get at home. The taste of the food you get here cannot be equal to what you get in your house, and there are also individual differences.”

We attempted speaking with any member of the kitchen committee, but we were not allowed on the basis that we could not interact with IDPs.

Thousands of women and children in the Damare camp were being continually shielded from the press in a determined bid to control the information available to the press.

RANCOUR OVER ‘BAN ON SEX’

In our earnest persistence, we re-visited the camp two days later to see if we could get more information from the state of things in one of the most populated IDP camps in Yola.

On arrival, majority of the officials were not in the camp. We met the peace corps, as the military men were fondly called. They informed us that the officials were in a meeting under a tree just in front of the camp.

They told us to wait for five minutes. As we could not get a bed, we got a bench, Five minutes lasted more than an hour. While we waited, one of the few persons we interacted with told us that the meeting was necessitated by a little confusion on the camp earlier in the day.

He said the IDPs “threatened to protest” against some of the camp rules, which included “no sex on camp”. He explained that the officials were against sex on camp due to the fact that some men who had lost their spouses to Boko Haram insurgency may become inclined to raping other women and girls on camp.

“This difference in opinion drove the officials and the IDPs at loggerheads,” he added. The man, who requested not to be named, said that was the major reason for the meeting.

Speaking to TheCable on the resolution of the meeting, Madu said some successes were recorded on both ends.

“It’s not as if we don’t see our women; but the time is 7pm to 10pm, which the IDPs say is too short. The time was reviewed to 7pm to 11pm,” he said.

“Another issue was that some IDPs who wanted to leave insisted on leaving with NEMA-provided mattresses, but NEMA reasonably told the people that they cannot leave with the mattresses because other IDPs would still come in to use them.

“Another issue we discussed was that of condiments and soup. The food is better now.”

Madu remained discreet about sex on camp, refusing to state explicitly if there was any ban on sex. Instead, he kept on maintaining that they could now “see their women between 7pm and 11pm daily”.

Editor’s Note: The interviews used for this story were conducted in Hausa. Translations to English were done by Daramola Grace