Victims Of Boko Haram Insurgency Lament Life Without Compensation

Victims Of Boko Haram Insurgency Lament Life Without Compensation

Kareem Haruna

— July 6, 2014 (Leadership Sunday)



Social workers organizing relief items for over 4000 IDPs and victims  Boko Haram at a Maiduguri Refugee camp (Phot0:-  EchoesInn).          

As Borno State battles with the ongoing Boko Haram conflicts that have so far claimed thousands of lives in the past three years, many victims of the insurgency, especially those whose relatives have been killed, now live a life of penury, due to lack of adequate support from government.

Leadership Sunday can authoritatively report that more that 10,000 persons have either been turned orphans or widows in Borno State in the past three years that the state has been plunged into the Boko Haram crisis.

Many of the bereaved victims have either been displaced from their homes or have lost their places of business as a result of Boko Haram attacks and killings.

For those whose family members or breadwinners were consumed by the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency, the emotional pains were not all about mourning their loved ones, but also about how to survive without any meaningful support.

Borno State government has in the past two years been offering what it described as “widow’s might of support” to the families of those whose relations have been killed as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency.

It is on record that the sum of N250,000 is usually given to families of every person that got killed by the insurgents as a means of support for the family. Also, the sum of N1 million is given to the families of security operatives who died during attacks or combat operations.

Social worker helping one of the victims of Boko Haram conflict with a bag of rice at the Maiduguri camp for IDPs
(photo:- EchoesInn)

But with the recent surge of attacks by the sect which accounted for nearly 1,000 people in the last six months, government seemed not able to cope with the fast rising toll of human deaths. As such, many victims with even worse experiences are left without adequate monetary or material support.

Presently, there are over 5,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) being camped in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, who have lost not only their relatives, but also their homes, farmlands and places of business to the ravaging Boko Haram terrorists.

Their fear is what becomes of them after the storm. “We have come from Gwoza, Konduga and Damboa local government areas of Borno State to take refuge here in Maiduguri, because the Boko Haram gunmen have taken over our villages and killing our people,” said Yazara Abubakar, a widow and mother of five children.

“Government has given us bags of rice, spaghetti, some bales of cloth and buckets to use here in the camp. But that will not take us long, and we may not be living as refugees

No school, proper  shelter for IDP's Children at the camp
(Photo:- EchoesInn) 

for long. What happens when it is time to go home? Where do we call home? And who will rebuild our destroyed homes and replace our looted or burnt foodstuffs? That is our concern now,” she said.

Borno State government has spent money running into billions of naira in rebuilding homes, schools, markets and shops that have been destroyed by Boko Haram members in one part of the state or the other in the past three years. But the killings and destruction still go on.

Many Borno elders, like Dr Bulama Mali Gubio, had repeatedly implored the federal government to come in and assist the state in compensating the victims of the Boko Haram insurgency to enable them pick up their pieces together.

“The state government cannot do it all alone. It is duty bound for the federal government to come in and provide some compensation for those whose homes were destroyed and their families killed, either by the insurgents or by the soldiers during shootout,” he had once said.

Babagana Awari, a displaced person from Bama local government area, said, “We really need government to assist us one way or the other, so that we can be able to survive this hardship. No place like one’s home. But now that we cannot even go back home, we really need to be assisted by government in a manner that we too can start a small business. If not, many of us may not survive this.”

Some of the displaced villagers are even asking to be paid the prescribed Islamic compensation for death cause by murder or even accident, which is called Diyya.

LEADERSHIP Sunday was made to understand that paying Diyya for a single life taken amounts to about N7 million. And with over 5000 persons that were displace across the state, if the state government was to even foot the bill and pay the compensation, it may have to cough out N35 billion. 

But sadly, it is not the duty of government to pay Diyya for bereaved persons because such compensations are paid by those carried out the act of killing. 

“It is not the role of government to pay compensation to those whose homes were destroyed or those who had lost a relative or two. That responsibility is for those who commit the crime, that is what Islam prescribed”, said an official of Borno state government who plead anonymity. 

‘But government has a role in seeing that these victims are assisted in one form or the other so that even when the insurgency becomes a thing of history, there wouldn't be any case of another social crisis’, said the official who works in the state ministry of religious affairs. 

With the increasing toll of death especially in the last six months, it seems even the Borno state government is now finding it tough meeting up with its tradition of donating N250, 000 for each persons that has been killed. In just six months, nearly 1000 persons may have been killed in across the state, and if the state government is to make its promised payment for each death, it has to cough out at least N250 million; “and this is beside the cost of rebuilding homes, shops, schools and markets that have been destroyed recently”. 

“That is why the federal government has to step in to assist the state government so that these displaced people would not be left to suffer the more", said the officials of the state ministry of religious affairs. 

Borno state Goverornor, Mr Kashim Shettima (in glasses, center), with the Coordinating Minister of Nigerian Economy, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo Iweala (on Shettima's right) meeting with some Boko HARAM-induced  IDPs in one of the camps in Maiduguri sometimes in June, 2014
Photo:- EchoesInn