Discomfort in IDPs’ camps: A threat the Government must check!
Since Nigeria became encumbered with violence and aggression, the clustering of Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDP) camps have become a phenomenon of concern, among other plethora devices sprouting as a result of unrest and violent dealings in the Country. The congestion of these camps, particularly in close proximity to areas where the profile of terror operations has been stormy with unsavoury records, remains topical. Situations have seen settled individuals and families, and where excruciating, whole communities, hoisted from their abode to camps of discomfort.
The displeasure of the state of living within these camps have become a subject that brings to fore hand plethora of socio-economic, cultural, political and psychological impacts. The invocation of emotions and psychological disorder with the ills of depression, are defective forms of exposure to human well being. The resultant effects are clusters of strings that practically depreciate human dignity and, in the long run, a collapse of human development. Hence, the more citizens are made to pass the unsavoury experience of the unhealthy conditions of living within the IDPs, the stronger the record of human development index wax worse in the Country. Where more persons keep suffering from the fate of landing unfavourably into where they would have never wanted to be, as the IDP camps, the more it appears frightening that the Country keeps risking the brunt of direct and indirect impacts of suffering collapse of human productivity.
Life in IDP camps is such which have shown the depth of emotional, psychological and sociocultural deficiencies whose impacts in the long run make the productivity of the victims to socio-economic development anti-clockwise.
The burden of the Government in caring for these victims is another subject of elaborate discourse. The use of the avenue for mischievous elements to unlawfully corner resources of public funds for personal aggrandizement, has not been savoury. It is apparent the impacts of the displacement of persons from their settlements remains locked in a chain of discomfiture, where bearers of the emblem of mischief would not shy from exploiting the system for personal aggrandisement. The use of the administration of the IDP camps to corner funds have left victims becoming subject to stronger storms of discomfort. Most recently, over two million victims of terror in IDP camps in Benue State, cried to the Federal Government to intervene with measures to rehabilitate them back to their homes. This cry would largely not be unconnected to the plight in the camps where they have gathered for refuge.
Worsening conditions for IDPs in their camps call for deep reflections, demanding rapt attention. It would be nothing but injustice, with all repugnance, to see victims subjected to deepening calamities, against refuge which they seek in the camps. The rippling effects of the poor state of living for which the victims are subjected to, have lamentably exposed them not only to threats, but also susceptibility to mischievous escapades. Terror groups in the Country, particularly in the North, have had over time, the strategies of recurrent recruits of displaced persons to strengthen their foothold and membership base.
Those who have been lured would clearly want to make the unease of the state of living in the IDP camps as their predicament, leaving them with no choice than to meet survival instinct by joining up terror groups. The thought of a fight against a system believed to be unproductive and irresponsive to the plight of the masses has been the ground of excuse for many.
The heightening of insecurity woes in the Country cannot be largely unconnected with the worsening of economic conditions with the attendant sociocultural impacts and its defective strings. The broadening wings of terror activities have seen its membership gaining broad extension, as more citizens as victims of unhealthy conditions and misfortunes, have become susceptible to luring devices of turning into cruel and offensive activities of criminality against humanity. The impacts have remained broad in scope with clustering deficiencies which have continued to make the Country a troubled zone, bewildered by the wind of illegitimate actions and aggressions at varying degrees in orientation, composition and targets. The summation of the clusters of strings of terror and criminal anti-state architectures of violence have made the Country continuously a red zone, feared for habitation in the global sight.
The prevailing sensations are deeply counterproductive to an atmosphere where development can be propelled for the good of the greatest number. Since, fixing conditions by the firm coordination of activities in the most pragmatic measures for allocation of resources to profoundly cater for the interest of the greatest number, is a central course for the purpose of government, just as the security of lives and properties are prime, it has become demanding on the Nigerian government to awake to its responsibilities to fix the displaced tissues of the societal fabrics which have continued to render life unbearable for many. Any government which fails in the regard of upholding the nucleus of safety for its citizens, and moderately, a fair state of conducive living, may not be incorrectly described as having failed. It is thus, demanding that the Government of the day arise to the demands of redressing the various strings of discomfort which have continually brought citizens to the horizon of susceptibility to crime and terror disposition, as their best response to discomforts.
