IDPs

Reports from Maiduguri, Borno State indicate that Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs have abandoned their camps for the streets in protest against underfeeding and lack of care by the Nigerian authorities.

The IDPs from different camps in Maiduguri took over the Kano-Maiduguri Expressway in protest, according to reports

Efforts by security operatives to make them leave the highway have so far failed.

The protesters, mostly women and children told journalists they are suffering from hunger and thirst in their various camps.

“We are not fighting but fighting for our survival. The foods are not being supplied, there is no water. No medication for our sick kids; we want food or they should send us back to our villages. “They don’t allow us to go out to beg. We are kept like prisoners without food,”  an IDP who identified herself as Aisa from Marte said.

“They don’t allow us to go out to beg. We are kept like prisoner without food.”, she said.

The State government is yet to react to the protest.

Local and international humanitarian agencies have been raising alarm about chronic underfeeding and malnutrition among the IDPs who were displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency.

Details later