Boko Haram’s victims receive aid

WHEN Nigerian businessman Garba Buzu noticed a significant increase in the number of children begging and foraging for food on the streets of Maiduguri, capital of Borno state in north-east Nigeria, he knew he had to act.

Maiduguri has been inundated in the past three years by people fleeing their homes and Boko Haram militants, sending the city’s population surging to 2 million from about 600 000.

More than 15 000 people have been killed and 2 million displaced in Nigeria and neighbouring Chad, Niger and Cameroon during the Boko Haram’s seven-year insurgency, with Maiduguri in the heart of Boko Haram territory most badly affected.

Buzu, a real estate entrepreneur, said witnessing the plight of these children prompted him to throw open the gates to his 2 000-home estate – even though his philanthropic work in the past has prompted death threats.

“They can stay for as long as they need to… both Muslims and Christians are welcome,” Buzu, 77, a Muslim, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview in his home in the Pompomari area of Maiduguri.

The father of 38 children from four wives, Buzu said people could stay in his property “until Boko Haram finishes”, even if that happened after he died.

Buzu’s decision to help people has not gone unnoticed – or down well – with the militants whose campaign to set up an Islamic state adhering to strict Sharia law has deep roots in Nigeria’s Christian-Muslim divide.

Buzu said he was attacked in 2012 by suspected Boko Haram militants who rode up to his house on motorbikes and fired six shots at him, all of which missed. This was during a spate of high profile Boko Haram-linked assassinations in Maiduguri.

“A number of my friends were assassinated at the time,” he said, shrugging off any further possible threats.

While many of the people arriving in Maiduguri manage to find accommodation with host families, some end up living in camp sites on plots of empty land where thousands of cases of disease and malnutrition have been reported.

Ayuba Muhammed, a leader in the camp who has lived there for two years, said it was not as easy as it sounded to be allowed into Buzu Quarters.

“Nobody can enter just like that,” said Muhammed, explaining that everyone there had to first be identified by someone who knows them, to avoid infiltration by Boko Haram insurgents.

“They find someone who knows Garba Buzu and who knows them also, then he will bring them inside and give them a house,” he said.

He added that the leaders of the communities from where the people fled are responsible for identifying families before they are allowed to stay.

At present, Buzu Quarters, has 2 000 two-bedroom bungalows and hosts 1 200 households. – Thomson Reuters Foundation