A
shocking and investigative report has uncovered some hidden stories of
events which happened recently at the Internally Displaced Persons camps
within the Federal Capital Territory.
File photo
Day in day out, gory and pathetic tales emanate from the Internally
Displaced Persons (IDP) camps within the Federal Capital Territory
(FCT), where people from mainly Gwosa and Bama in Borno State who
survived the ferocious attacks of Boko Haram insurgents are taking
refuge.
The latest of such bad news was the killing of Ishaya Joshua by
another inmate of the Durumi, Area 1 camp, named Sadik Hamman, a.k.a
Azango.
Joshua, 26, since arriving the camp in 2014 had tried his hands in
various ventures including operating commercial motorcycle popularly
referred to as okada, until recently, he raised some money, rented a
farmland in Nasarawa State cultivating beans and maize.
Not inclined to wanting the displacement to be a permanent set
back, Joshua who had looked forward to a bountiful harvest from his
beans farm, it was gathered he had earlier in the year proposed marriage
to a female inmate called Grace. They consummated their marriage on May
25 at the Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN) within the camp.
Trouble actually started Saturday, November 12, when Hamman
indicated intension to sell his fairly used telephone and Joshua
declared interest to buy it.
According to one of the inmates, Joshua had priced the phone
N4,000, which infuriated Hamman, who immediately attacked the former for
under-pricing the phone.
Other inmates of the camp had settled the misunderstanding between two of them, and thought the matter was over.
It was a big shock to everybody there when Hamman on seeing that
Joshua turned back to leave the scene and he allegedly carried a car
jack and hit him on the head. Joshua slumped on the spot with blood
gushing from his head.
He was rushed to Asokoro General Hospital by other IDPs where he
was confirmed dead by the doctors. His remains were also interred same
day at the Apo Cemetery after obtaining the necessary police clearance.
When Daily Sun visited the camp on November 15, his young widow,
Grace was said to have joined Joshua’s mother in Mararaba for them to go
and inspect the deceased’s farm in Nasarawa. The farm which was the
family’s only hope of livelihood was reported to have been destroyed by
some herders.
Elder brother of the late Joshua, Dogara told our reporter that
they were yet to overcome the devastation caused by the unfortunate
incident. He disclosed that their father, who is a refugee in Cameroun
was yet to be informed of what happened.
When contacted, Secretary of the camp, Mr. Bala Yusuf, said he has
officially informed the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and
the National Humana Rights Commission (NHRC) of the incident, explaining
that was the only thing they could do under the circumstance.
It was reliably gathered that the suspect, who was originally
detained at the Force CID, Area 10, Garki has been transferred to the
SARS, at the old abattoir and may be charged to court accordingly.
FCT Command spokesman, Anjuguiri Manza could not confirm the
incident when called on telephone as he said he was yet to be briefed.
Meanwhile, it has been harvest of deaths as at least ten children
have been confirmed dead in a diarrhoea outbreak at the IDP camp at Wasa
in Waru ward of the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC).
Executive Secretary of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Primary
Healthcare Development Board, Dr. Rilwanu Mohammed, who confirmed the
development to national daily said the outbreak in Wasa IDP camp may
have been caused by a contaminated stream where the children and other
displaced persons drank from.
According to him, “They have been drinking from the stream.
There are two boreholes in the camp, but because they have to pay a
token of N20 for maintenance to fetch from there they avoided the place.
The water from the stream where the children went had been contaminated
by animals which drink from there. The water source has been purified
with chlorine gas,” he stated.
However, the Chairman of Wassa camp, Hamman Bukar told Daily Sun
that the situation has been brought under control after intervention by
the health authorities.
He lamented that over 5,000 inmates of the camp are left to live
without any health facility, stressing that the last time the people had
access to health outreach was in March, when Speaker Yakubu Dogara in a
well-publicised event brought a company that came and mounted a cabin
tagged ‘mobile clinic’ there.
Bukar, who reasoned that the death rate would have been curtailed
if there was a functional clinic in the camp, appealed to the
government, corporate bodies and well-meaning people to come to their
immediate aid by providing a generator to enable them power the
motorised borehole in the camp.
-Daily Sun
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