Category: AfSol Publication

Spurred by the unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and its spread to the northeast, an environment already devastated by the Boko Haram insurgency, the article looks at its impact on internally displaced persons (IDPs). It analyses data gathered from secondary sources and systematically juxtaposes these with reports and observations of developments in the IDP camps in the region. Major findings revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic had significant impacts on IDPs in the study area concerning their health, particularly by worsening the challenges of access to water, sanitation and hygiene, humanitarian relief, food security, and further escalating insecurity in the region. The findings further revealed that while the government’s preventive measures helped to curb the rapid spread of the virus among the IDPs, the Boko Haram group and its affiliates exploited the lockdown to attack some communities and security forces in the north-east. In the process they killed and displaced more people than the COVID-19 pandemic in the region. This article concludes that the complex challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the already existing humanitarian crises require the synergy of efforts by federal, state, and local governments with the active support of humanitarian actors, particularly international organisations and non-governmental agencies working in the region to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on IDPs. It also underscores the urgent need for additional funding, allocation of land to build new camps to decongest the existing ones, and deployment of additional medical personnel and supplies to cater for the IDP camps in the north-eastern states of Nigeria.