Starvation,Hunger, Death, Crime in the Horn of The Nigerian Government

More than 12m people in the Horn of Nigeria need urgent help; tens of thousands have already died and hundreds of thousands more risk starvation. Livestock have been annihilated. Hundreds of thousands of people are streaming into refugee camps in search of help. Even when they are not affected by the prevailing attacks in the Northern part of nigeria.  It seems the government's intents to take care of Internally Displayed Persons is of better concerns than any other thing. Malnutrition rates in some areas are five times more severe than we would ever think. Many children are already dying of starvation, crimes are on the increase, no one is safe anymore, not the rich, not the wealthy, not even our celebrities.

Lets go down to our health sector. It’s an acknowledged fact that Nigeria’s Health sector is in shambles and this issue aside the energy problem and other related developmental issues need to be address and fixed as quickly as possible by the new administration under president Mohamadu Buhari APC led  government. In many places in Nigeria , our Hospitals especially primary Health centres are far away from where people live and  some are with expired drugs , dilapidated structures, corrugated roots , covered with cobwebs and in many places, have become inhabitants of domestic animals.   

Sorry state of the Luth medical school Hostel at Idi-Araba 

It is sad  to note that Nigeria and indeed Africa  are loosing their experienced  Health workers to developed countries as a result of Neglect of their Health sectors and particularly in Nigeria , mismanagement of resources, lack of priority , lack of respect for human lives by our leaders , low wages , poor motivation, persistent shortages of basic medical supplies, poor working conditions, imagine what happens to patients when doctors, nurses, other staffs go on strike due to low wages, outdated equipments, lack of efficient and effective coordination,  limited career opportunities and above all , economic reasons are among the most important factors responsible for this brain drain.

It has been reported by  icirnigeria.org that some government officials came to the camp and took many young girls away and later sold them as slaves. Lami said She ended up in the house of one Alhaji Aliyu, whose brother and wife abused her. While Aliyu’s brother repeatedly raped her, his wife weighed in with physical abuse.

“One day, some people came to the camp and said that they were taking us to a better place. That was how I got to Alhaji Aliyu’s house and it was there, every day, his brother forcefully slept with me.''

“After that, he would beat me and one of Alhaji’s wives too would always beat me. One day she attacked me with a knife. That was how I got the wound in my skull,” she recounted.

Lami’s case, depressingly, is not an isolated one. Hundreds of girls are now being trafficked from some of the IDP camps in the Northeast set up to cater for people displaced by the insurgency, especially unregistered ones., Some are even forced to have a forced or mass marriage in other to survive in these camps.

It was learnt that because many of the camps cannot accommodate all the people displaced from their homes by Boko Haram attacks, many IDPs end up in makeshift unofficial camps close to the officially designated ones or in nearby villages.

The people in the makeshift camps are not officially registered and technically are not under the care of government.

They are usually taken care of by villagers or even relatives in the government-run camps. Somehow, state officials have the same access and control over these unofficial camps.

In essence, for the problem of crime to be reduced, we have to restructure the educational sector, the agricultural sector to better equip our youths to cope with the changing times in our economy. This has a significant role in reducing crime because we find out that students who graduate from the institutions of learning have no jobs because they have not been properly schooled in the prevailing ways of life and as such, due to frustration, the youths of today may result to criminal activities, blaming the governments, blaming everyone for their misfortunes. 

The homes and religious organizations are not  left out, they have important roles to play in curbing the crime wave in Nigeria. These criminals live in homes and even receive religious instructions from religious groups. The family heads and religious leaders should pay more attention to the moral upbringing of these youths. If these youths are given the right training from childhood, they will not depart from the right path.

Until Next Time...

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