Sulaiman-Ibrahim Off to a Good Start at Refugees Commission

perspective

Although Haj. Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim was deployed to the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants, and Internally Displaced Persons (NCFRMI) by President Muhammadu Buhari in May 2021, she is already making impacts with her humane approach to the management of the plights of IDPs, writes Olaoluwakitan Babatunde

The Spiraling IDPs, Refugees Challenges

Even though the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants, and Internally Displaced Persons (NCFRMI) was established with an expanded mandate to coordinate the national action for the protection and assistance of Persons of Concern – refugees, asylum seekers, returnees, stateless persons, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), and Migrants – it is debatable that the government ever envisaged a day when the country would be flooded with IDPs as is currently the case today.

Indeed, the fact that the Commission was initially named the National Commission for Refugees (NCFR) before its mandate was expanded in 2002 and 2009 to cover IDPs as well as Migration and Development, respectively, shows that the earlier focus must have been to cater to the welfare of West Africans fleeing the bloody wars and conflicts in their countries such as the First Liberia Civil War between 1986 and 1996/1997 and the second Liberia War, which lasted from 1999 to 2003. For instance, on June 17, 2003 alone, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), received 1,989 asylum seekers from Liberia, who were quartered at the Oru refugee camp in Osun State jointly managed by the Nigerian Red Cross Society (ICRC), the UNHCR, and the NCFRMI (NCFR at the time).

Also, according to a 2001 survey by the United States Committee for Refugees and Migrants, Nigeria hosted almost 10,000 refugees at the end of 2001, including about 4,000 from Sierra Leone, 3,000 from Chad, nearly 3,000 from Liberia, and several hundred from at least five other countries, although a good number of these refugees lived on their own and integrated into their host communities.

The table only started turning during the 2000s when Nigeria gradually moved from a largely refugees receiving to one where the citizens are internally displaced. The US body estimated that 70,000 Nigerians were internally displaced by communal violence within that period, while 7,000 others applied for asylum in Europe. The advent of Boko Haram and Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP) insurgency, have worsened the number of internally displaced Nigerians took. It took a quantum leap, especially in the highly destabilised Lake Chad region.

According to the UNHCR, Boko Haram insurgency had displaced nearly 2.4 million people in the Lake Chad Basin as at December 2020. Over 2.1 million people were internally displaced in Nigeria. Also Niger, Cameroon, and Chad hosted about 312,401 Nigerian refugees as follows: Niger – 177,773 or 56.9 per cent as at May 31, 2021; Cameroon – 118,334 or 37.9 per cent as at June 30, 2021; and Chad – 16,294 or 5.2 per cent as June 30, 2021.

Meanwhile, a 2020 NCFRMI data gleaned by our reporter shows that the Nigerian Government hosts IDP camps in 26 states, namely Plateau, Adamawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Taraba, Yobe, Cross River, Niger, Kogi, Bayelsa, Zamfara, Katsina, Anambra, Delta, Sokoto, Kebbi, Benue, Nasarawa, Ebonyi, Lagos, Edo, Rivers, Ondo, Oyo and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). It shows that there are about 2,816,542 recorded IDPs in the country, with Borno State hosting 1,704,473 IDPs, by far the highest number of IDPs, while Lagos hosts the least figure of about 1,002. The internal displacements were caused by insurgency, banditry, communal conflicts, farmers-herders clashes, and flood. Some are also as a result of a combination of factors.

Many troubles of IDPs

Today, Nigerian IDPs are faced with enormous challenges, which the NCFRMI is grappling with. According to the UNHCR, the IDP crisis has been exacerbated by conflict-induced food insecurity and severe malnutrition, which have risen to critical levels” in the Lake Chad Basin.

“Despite the efforts of Governments and humanitarian aid, some 12.5 million people remain in need of humanitarian assistance in the Lake Chad Basin region, with 5.3 million people remaining food insecure.

“The challenges of protecting the displaced are compounded by the deteriorating security situation as well as socio-economic fragility, with communities in the Sahel region facing chronic poverty, a harsh climatic conditions, recurrent epidemics, poor infrastructure and limited access to basic services.

“Despite the return of Nigerian IDPs and refugees to accessible areas, the crisis remains acute”, the UN body, adds.

If the challenges are much for the IDPs, the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic have even added salt to the injury. And in all this, women, girls, and children are particularly worst hit. The global humanitarian community, including the UNHCR, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Public Service International (PSI), and the International Red Cross Society, among others, said this much during an e-conference organised by the NCFRMI to mark the 2020 World Humanitarian Day.

Speaking during the webinar, which he co-moderated with the Deputy Director (now Acting Director), IDPs at NCFRMI, Fatima Maman Daura, former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, Nigel Fisher, said that “While Covid-19 makes no distinction between social and economic status, there is no doubt that once again, as in any emergency, the poorest and the most disadvantaged are disproportionately affected, and among them women and girls in particular”.

The panel identified exposure to abuse or violence in their immediate environments, access to basic healthcare and community services, protection from communicable diseases, access to clean water, adequate sanitation, basic food and nutrition, access to decent hygiene, shrunk livelihoods, access to shelters, access to prenatal care and basic drugs, access to safe delivery facilities, and access to family planning, among a host of others as challenges facing displaced women and girls. According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), 17,053 babies were born in two years (2017 to 2019) to IDPs in 18 locations in Borno State alone.

Associated with this and also identified as a major challenge faced by IDPs is lack of access to education for displaced children. In a webinar, “Achieving Quality Education for Internally Displaced Children and Young People” organised by Save the Child UK and the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies last Wednesday, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, Cecilia Jimenez-Damary stressed: “Internal displacement often threatens the physical, mental and social aspects of a child’s life. And when internal displacement occurs, community, (and) family structures are likely to break down. Traditional institutions tend to disintegrate, placing children at greater risk of exploitation, abuse and neglect, and insufficient or lack of education. Not least quality education.

“In my report to the General Assembly in 2018, I stressed again that displacement is a process of loss”.

Also, as the then Country Director, Plan International Nigeria, Dr. Hussaini Abdu, once put it, “Today’s 15-year-olds were only 7 when this conflict began. Growing up amid brutal conflict will have affected them profoundly and without education, children are at risk of being seen as an ideal recruitment pool for extremist organisations or criminal gangs”.

A child denied formal education also losses critical benefits like stable nurturing and enriching environments, says the International Displacement Monitoring Centre, IDMC.

Amid these challenges, it is nevertheless the statutory responsibility of the NCFRMI to political provide protection, food and non-food items, education, skill acquisition and various other types of empowerment aimed at ensuring the restoration of the human dignity of the IDPs and refugees and ultimately help them to return to their original homes or be integrated into their host communities.

Sulaiman-Ibrahim’s humane approach

Whereas successive NCFRMI administrations have put in efforts to undertake these tasks, Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, has no doubt upped the ante since she was recently drafted from the National Agency for the Prevention of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP) to the Commission as the CEO and Honourable Federal Commissioner. The woman, who seems to be in a hurry to impact the lives of IDPs recently hit Borno State, Nigeria’s highest concentration of IDPs, to assess things by herself, give out relief materials, and personally interface with the IDPS to know where the shoe pinches them most.

During the three-day tour, her first since effectively taking over at the Commission, Sulaiman-Ibrahim was at the El-Miskin IDP camp in Jere LGA of Borno State, which presently houses over 1,550 households comprising of over 7,111 persons from Mafa, Marte, Jere, Monguno, Magumeri Dikwa and Ngala LGAs, Borno. She was also at Muhammadu Buhari IDP camp, one of the biggest camps, housing 2,321 households made up of 11,605 individuals from Abadam, Kukawa, Guzamala, Mobbar and Marte LGAs of Borno State.

To ameliorate the sufferings of IDPs and assist the most vulnerable, women and girls, Haj. Sulaiman-Ibrahim personally supervised the distribution of both food and non-food items. Each beneficiary household got 25 kg of rice, 25 kg of beans, 25 kg of millet, four pieces of spaghetti, 25 kg of maize, one gallon of palm oil/groundnut oil as well as matrasses, mats, kettle, insecticides, inner wears, buckets, cooking pots, plates, cups, spoons, towels, and sanitary pads. Some IDPs were moved to tears, not only by the magnitude of what they were given, but the manner of the giving.

However, it was her group interactions to hear out the IDPs that were the talk of the town. Her sitting on the mats with the women or personally carrying and cleaning the babies up brought out what had been lacking for ages in the management of IDPs- empathy, human face, and humanness. It could easily be seen from the pictures how happy and reassured those IDPs were relating with her so closely and speaking their minds and their needs.

Sulaiman-Ibrahim pledged the commitment of the Buhari administration to better the lives of IDPs through the NCFRMI. She commended the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq for her support to IDPs, pledging to work with the Ministry to initiate durable and sustainable plans of inclusiveness of vulnerable persons.

Meanwhile, the Honourable Federal Commissioner is already launching the setting up of Learning Centres in IDP camps across the country to ensure that children and the youth, who find themselves in these crisis situations, are equipped with universal basic and vocational education, and skills.

It might still be too early in the day to assess her, however, if it is true that morning gives a glimpse of the day, it could be said that for the NCFRMI, a new Sheriff is in town, who is not only in a hurry to impact and get things done, but is also bent on doing so most diligently and with every milk of humaneness and humility.