Aside from the act of a 30-year-old graduate of Statistics, Enoch Yohana, who has chosen to give education to children in an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in Abuja, almost everything else is wrong at this camp, where open defecation is the norm, writes FAITH YAHAYA
The end to the over a decade long fight against insurgency in the Northeast seems not in sight, despite Federal Government’s claim that the insurgents have been decimated. Efforts have been made and are still being made to win the war, which has left thousands of adults, women and children displaced, while property worth billions of Naira have been lost.
According to the United Nations (UN) Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the number of out of school children worldwide has shown that despite years of efforts to get every child into the classroom, progress has come to a standstill. The data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Institute for Statistics (UIS) revealed that about 263 million children, adolescents and youth worldwide – one in every five – are out school, a figure that has barely changed over the past five years.
A survey conducted by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), also indicated that out-of-school children population in Nigeria has risen from 10.5 million to 13.2 million, which happened to be the highest in the world. Most of these children are in Nigeria’s northern states of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa, where Boko Haram insurgency has disrupted academic activities. At the peak of the insurgency, some of the victims fled from the northeast to other states for refuge.
Our reporter, who visited the new Kuchingoro Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), spoke with some of the inmates about the challenges they face in the camp. The new Kuchingoro IDP camp is surrounded by state-of-the-art buildings painted in different colours, and different heights and sizes. The camp, however, sits in between these buildings like fish in the water but being starved of water; like a butcher complaining of hunger; or like a tailor’s child in tattered clothes. This is the case of most inmates of the camp, who live in what cannot be described as shelter. What they so much desire seem close to them, but they cannot access it.
Approaching the camp, one is greeted with stench from open defecation. A little boy among the inmates ran close to where the reporter’s vehicle was parked, obviously to answer the call of nature. The boy, in a pair of red trousers, was accompanied by a friend about his age. He hurriedly pulled his trousers and stoop in the open to defecate. He was through in a few minutes, stood up, picked a dry twig nearby and ran it back and forth between his buttocks to show that he was accustomed to such “cleaning” method. The boy quickly threw away the now sticky piece of twig, pulled up his trousers and went out of sight, with his friend in tow. As far as he was concerned, he had fulfilled the hygiene requirements of cleaning after defecation. The inner parts of his trousers would take care of the remnants.
Inside the camp, women and children were seen washing clothes, children playing in groups, while most of the boys were behind the five blocks of classroom playing football. The camp has four water tanks and the children were seen at interval coming to fetch water with containers of different sizes. The camp also has a mini market, abandoned clinic, abandoned skill acquisition centre and about 10 improvised toilets for the 1724 inmates. There was no bathroom in sight.
Most of the inmates complained of lack of privacy, difficulty in raising children, poor education, and no access to basic health care. For the men, they said the level of respect their wives have for them has dropped, linking it to their inability to provide for them. One thing they seem to have in common is the fear of rain. Most of them sleep on bare floors while the “well to-dos” among them use mats or old banners used for past events in the city. They said the heavy rainfall pattern in Abuja accompanied by floods, has made it difficult for them to sleep.
When asked how they cope when it rains, an inmate, Alhaji Ibro, like others who are optimist that the rainy season would end soon, said: “We stand with bowls and buckets in our hands to pour out the water that drops into our tents.”
To address the education problem, Enoch Yohana, a young graduate of statistics from the University of Maiduguri, who is also the coordinator and volunteer teacher in the camp, said the teachers are proposing a campaign to keep the kids in class daily, with N50.
Narrating how the idea was conceived, Yohana said: “I am the coordinator of the school. What has kept me in this camp is the passion for the children. The idea to help the children came after I graduated in 2014. I came to Abuja to visit a friend and when I came, he said we should come to the camp to visit some of the people who fled our state. During the visit, I was told of how my dad was killed and how some people sustained injuries. I planned to go to Lagos after my short visit to Abuja. But after hearing their stories, I was moved because their living condition was pathetic. They had nothing.
“What came to my mind was to device means to educate the kids then. But the problem at that time in the camp was beyond education. There was general problem of feeding, health challenges, no electricity and security. In 2014, we introduced skill acquisition, soap making, baking and cream making for the women. Then in the evening, we usually organised lessons for the kids.
“In 2016, we started a health facility campaign because the death rate among the women was high at childbirth. I took it upon myself to take the women to the hospital and I used to beg the hospital staffers to treat them with my student’s ID card. Sometimes, I used to go to the hospital with my last registration form as a student, just to prove my identity. And they usually treated them free of charge. But when the number increased, they were overwhelmed and they stopped treating our women for free.”
Yohana hinted that both German and South African governments have helped to established a clinic and skill acquisition centre. He said: “South African embassy donated skill acquisition centre, equipped with sewing machines to actualise our skill acquisition dream. We had a batch of 100 people, who participated in the training, and after that, the centre became dormant. The idea was for those trained to train others, but after they acquired the skill, they left the camp. Twenty-five of them were trained in bead making, 25 in cosmetics, which included liquid soap and creams, while 50 were trained in sewing.
On the status of the clinic, he said: “We have a facility for the clinic but we lack manpower. We have one retired nurse, who comes around whenever she is free. She complained that her major challenge is transport fare. This has made me become everything, although I studied statistics because nobody is available to come to our aid.”
He continued: “In 2018, we went back to our plan of early education because most children just wake up in the morning and play till the day gets dark. And most of them get into fights a lot. I pleaded for a classroom from one of those who came on a visit. We named the school ‘Sharing Prosperity’ because the life of the kids is about sharing. The school idea was initiated after we discovered that those who claimed to be primary school leavers found it difficult to read. There are five classrooms in the camp and each class has 30 seats. We presently have 172 pupils in various classes.”
As another school year began, the volunteer teachers revealed their plans to ensure that the pupils acquire education. Yohana, who spoke on behalf of the seven volunteer teachers said: “If each child pays N50 daily, it will be N1000 a month. We decided to give the campaign a thought because most people, who visit the camp come with food items while we still lack learning materials. We believe the N50 per day will keep children in school which would, in turn, reduce the number of out of school children. With the alarming statistics of out of school children in Nigeria, we believe that with N50 a day, no child in the camp will be out of class.
“The campaign will also ensure that volunteer teachers get something for themselves. We have seven volunteer teachers who are IDPs. We hope to have two teachers per class because one teacher may not have the capacity to teach effectively. And you know that not all teachers are good in all subjects. So, we are planning that teachers who are good in certain areas focus on that. Presently, we depend on donations to get learning materials for the kids. We sourced for some of the educational materials from the FCT Education Resource Centre, like our curricula. FEMA has also been supporting and they brought UBEC to assess the standard of the school. Writing materials and other items are given to us by individuals.”
He continued: I see the N50 as a source of a campaign to support the welfare of the teachers. You know the school cannot be run by volunteers. The expectation is to have well-meaning Nigerians sponsor at least, a child in school. N50 can keep a child in school for a day and N250 would keep the child for a week, which means that a child can stay in the classroom for a month with N1000. We are hopeful that people would buy into the initiative, which would boost the morale of the teachers to put in their best. This would, in turn, reduce the number of out of school children. We would have asked the parents to pay but we know they don’t have.
“Even though N50 cannot buy a bottle of water, but it can take a child from the streets to the classroom. And when you take a child off the street, you are closing the prison gate. The reason for education is the liberation of the mind and when the mind is not liberated, what we will have is more crimes and we will have people who cannot think rationally. We don’t want the illiteracy level to continue anymore. The truth is that we found ourselves in this camp because Boko Haram was able to brainwash the uneducated ones. The crisis is being fueled by a low level of education because the educated ones will not allow themselves to be used or brainwashed.”
Inmates of the camp, who are mostly from Gwoza Local Government Area in Borno State, are hopeful that Governor Babagana Zulum will hasten the process of relocating them to their communities.
“We commend the effort of the new governor of Borno State, Prof. Zulum in combating insecurity in our homes. We are praying for the governor to find a lasting solution to our problem for us to go back home. Majority of us here are from Gwoza Local government and Bayan Dutse while others are from Adamawa and Yobe. We hear that the governor wants to change our identity from IDPs to normal citizens of this country and we are looking forward to that. We don’t want to be relocated from this camp to another camp anymore. We are hopeful that someday, we will leave Kuchingoro and move to our states.”