As the strife caused by the Boko Haram Islamic fundamentalists in the northeast heightens, the number of internally displaced residents has also risen; as there are thousands of people of the northeast comprising mainly: Chibok, Askira Uba and Mubi who are reportedly scattered across the federation with hundreds of them currently in Lagos, a state 900 km away from the northeast desperately seeking refuge with the state government.
Investigation has shown that the group of these persons comprises mainly teens who were students before they were sacked from their ancestral home by the insurgents, children who have loss either of the parents and women turned widows at the peak of their lives. While the fortunate ones are at the moment taking refuge with relatives in slums areas and with empathizing pastors.
The “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign has in no small way overshadowed weightier damages done in the northeast by the Islamic sect who have recently taken their brutal killings to unprecedented heights following what many Nigerians call “false” declaration of cease fire by the Nigerian Military authority. As the various concern groups, political parties and politicians alike, united with the now famous ‘bring back our girls’ slogan, aimed at ‘pressurizing’ the Federal Government to urgently secure the release of the girls, the insurgents have not just continue to kill, but beheads Christian husbands and hand their heads over to grieving and terrified wives in the presence of their children and coerced them to denial their faith.
The international community also seems to have turned deaf ear to the plight of Nigerians in the northeast that have lost all to the dreaded Boko Haram and are now wanderers in their own country; seeking help from churches that had also been plagued with series of scandal; with leading pastors in divorce court and arm deal allegation.
U.S Secretary of State John Kerry announced on September 12th, 2014 that the United States was providing nearly $500 million in additional humanitarian aid to help those affected by the war in Syria. On November 22nd in Istanbul, Turkey, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden announced nearly $135 million in new U.S. government funding to help respond to the ongoing emergency food needs inside Syria and in neighboring countries hosting Syrian refugees, bringing total U. S humanitarian funding to the Syria crisis to more than $3 billion.
The same measure has not been so replicated by the international community to Nigeria’s northeast communities who are facing fierce onslaught in the hands of the dreaded Boko Haram sect that have beheaded many of its victims like its counterpart in Syria ISIS. Some of the malnourished children their widowed mothers brought to Lagos were still in the womb when their fathers were killed; going days without food even in Lagos; with a bleak and uncertain future.
Source and Original Content by Nathaniel Akhigbe Businessdayonline.com