Informal settlements have sprung up across Borno State, and especially in Maiduguri, occupied by former IDPs who had fled resettlement centres.
(This is the second and final part of this report. Read the first part here).
Muhammad Kami is sitting on a mat that, like himself, has seen better days. He curls up his legs and rests on his right arm. Speaking softly, the 53-year-old recalls the events that displaced him from his ancestral village, Kauri in Konduga Local Government Area (LGA) of Borno State.
On Sunday, 26 January 2014, Boko Haram fighters, who had until then lived peacefully near Kauri, walked into the village square shooting residents on sight and razing houses and properties of the villagers.
Mr Kami, his wife and six children were among the lucky few to escape the carnage unhurt.
In the state capital, Maiduguri, where they fled, the family members stayed for two years. But in 2016, things became very difficult for them. They struggled to feed themselves and faced eviction as they could not renew their rent. The family members packed their belongings, consisting mostly of a few clothes, and headed for an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp.
"I rented a house at London Ciki for two years in Maiduguri," he recalled. "But when I couldn't continue paying the rent, we moved to the Farm Cantre camp where I got a tent and other stuff to make our own makeshift home."
When the government shut down the Farm Centre camp in September 2021, it only planned for those it recognised as IDPs. Sadly, Muhammad Kami and his family were not one of them.
"Those of us with tents in the camp were not given any house," the 53-year-old said. "They only considered those staying inside the houses there at the camp."
His family and others like them were put on a bus and taken to their local government headquarters only to be told by the council chairman that there were no provisions for them.
"The governor said he spoke to our LGA chairman. But the LGA Chairman said they didn't have any plans for us," he said. "They only gave us N20,000 each. I finished the money while trying to transport our belongings. You have to pay for everything, including those that guard your properties while you look for where to settle."
The council chairman allowed the Kamis and other families to settle on an open field close to the road where they erected shanties similar to the ones they left in the camp. But months later, they were evicted again.
That day, the council chairman and his deputy visited them and told them to move farther away from the roadside.
"They said we are on the roadside and the governor will not allow us," Mr Kami recalled.
A growing informal settlement
Now, out of sight from the Konduga-Bama road is a community of resettled IDPs living in shacks that are always threatened by strong winds.
Across the state, especially in Maiduguri, similar informal settlements have sprung up, occupied mostly by people who had fled their ancestral homes due to the Boko Haram insurgency and had left IDP camps after the government's resettlement programme.
In other LGAs, the informal settlements are made up of people who were not allocated the government's constructed or rehabilitated homes which were part of the resettlement process.
The state government built or rehabilitated about 20,000 homes for the resettlement of IDPs from camps, Governor Babagana Zulum's spokesperson, Isa Gusau, told our reporter. But there were more than a million IDPs, which means a large number of them do not have access to these homes.
Some IDPs were also not returned to their ancestral homes due to reasons including a lack of houses in their LGAs or their ancestral communities are still unsafe, forcing them to settle into other communities.
Re-displaced and abandoned
Yagana Ali, 38, and Yagana Abacha, 25, have more in common than their first names and single-mother status. They were displaced from Marte LGA, lived at the Bakassi IDP camp for six years, and were evicted on the same day when the camp was shut.
When the resettlement exercise began, 500 people were resettled in the rebuilt 500-unit housing estates of the Chad Basin Development Authority in Marte. Months later when another set of 200 returnees were resettled, the two Yaganas remained at the camp.
By the time they were evicted, there were no free homes left in Marte. "Our own village was not yet safe, and the houses in Marte LGA headquarters have been filled by the first 500 people," Ms Ali said.
When the camp was finally closed, they were resettled in Shuwari, Jere LGA but were not provided with a house.
Both of them are now part of a sprawling community of people living in shacks erected with used planks and tents brought from the IDP camps, just behind the 500 houses in Shuwari resettlement.
Both women described as their only source of relief, access to education provided to their daughters at the Girls' Academy in Maiduguri sponsored by a not-for-profit organisation, Girl Child Concerns (GCC). "They (GCC) took one girl from each household," Ms Ali explained. "We only go there once a month to visit them. But we haven't gone for months now because we don't have enough money for transport."
Since their resettlement to Shuwari, Ms Abacha said she split her time between weaving caps and selling firewood while her children beg for alms on the street.
"I weave caps. My children do that too and sometimes they go to beg for alms," she said. They sell the caps for between N3,000 and N5,000. According to her, it takes at least three weeks to produce one cap.
Ms Ali said she received N100,000 and some food items from the state government when they were leaving the camp.
"I was given N100,000, a bag of rice, spaghetti and cooking oil," she said. "But before we got here, I used almost all the cash for transport. We brought the food here. Since we came back here on 28 November 2022, we never got any help."
Occasionally, both women watched from a distance as officials of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) distributed relief materials to registered IDPs in the area.
Inadequate living conditions
But a senior Fellow at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, Bulama Bukarti, said their continuous living in the makeshift homes could create a sense of "permanent temporariness or an unending state of limbo" that can hinder trauma healing and impede the process of re-establishing stable lives.
"Moreover, living in makeshift homes in informal settlements exposes them to inadequate living conditions, limited access to basic services, and increased vulnerability to further displacement or exploitation," he said.
Meanwhile, a senior analyst at the Crisis Group, Vincent Founcher, said since conflict has always been a driver of urbanisation, the Borno State government needs to help settle those willing to stay in Maiduguri.
"I think one should accept that a number of those people will end up urbanising, and they should be assisted rather than pushed out," he said.
When home doesn't feel like home anymore
In January 2022, the governor's resettlement train made a stop at the Teachers Village Camp. There, Yakaka Chari, 45, her husband, Alhaji Chari, and their seven children were resettled in their ancestral village, Bagaa in Kukawa LGA in the northern part of Borno State.
But it didn't feel like home anymore when they got there.
"Our houses have been burnt by Boko haram and there's no place to live. Our husbands went back but there's no job for them," Mrs Chari said. "That's why we came here."
The family of nine now lives in a shack made of used wood, tents and mat in an informal settlement a few kilometres from the now-empty Teachers Village Camp, where they were evicted from.
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"I sell vegetables, matches. I buy them and my daughter hawks them in the neighbourhood," she added.
Beside her makeshift apartment is that of Hadiza Garba. Both women are from the same village but their husbands decided to return to this informal settlement as they had no economic activity at Kukawa.
Their husbands, who were away during this interview, are unemployed and work as labourers occasionally when they find work, both women said.
Government unaware of informal settlements
But the governor's spokesperson, Mr Gusau, said the government was not aware of the informal resettlements growing in different parts of the state.
Mr Gusau said standing committees in resettled areas monitor the progress of livelihood returning to the resettled communities.
He said Mr Zulum had in many cases registered former IDPs living in informal settlements and got them into the resettlement areas.
"Unfortunately it is part of the problems of crises. When you are dealing with this, you have a problem managing people. But to the best of my knowledge, people who come and get registered are being resettled and the resettlement is ongoing.
"There were instances when the governor came across the community with an informal settlement, the governor would drop, ask that they should be registered and resettled. So I believe that with time, as things go, there will definitely be something for them because the governor hates to see small communities of people settling in an informal area," Mr Gusau said.
The governor's aide, however, asked our reporter to send him the location of some of the findings and promised to call the attention of the appropriate authorities to them.
*This concludes the two-part report. The report was funded by grants from the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development.
