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<p>By<br />
EKANEM JOAN</p>
<p>When discussions about Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) arise, attention often turns to numbers and relief packages. Yet behind every statistic is a family that has lost a home, a child whose education has been disrupted, and a community torn apart by conflict. While compensation may replace damaged structures, it cannot restore the memories, dignity, and sense of belonging that displacement takes away.</p>
<p>Recompensation does not make it fine; How do you compensate a child staring at the fire and iron as it takes their lands, while uniforms hang up in a room? How do you price the memory of a mother who once called these lands home. She cuddled her children and the savoury flavour of meals each smiles on her family&#8217;s faces, or, the men who spent decades building a life, a family, a shelter, only to watch unconventional disasters take it away. The youths! With their lives sketched on a rough map, all gone &#8211; indefinitely. IDPs are just victims of a conflict or a humanitarian crisis waiting to be part of a scheme but humans with lives.</p><div class="UNIBAnOp" style="clear:both;float:left;width:100%;margin:0 0 20px 0;"><script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>

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<p>Nigeria is transitioning into durable solutions and we must remind the policy makers that a house is not merely a structure to be replaced but a sanctuary that has been entirely erased, some are memories. These compensations do not weigh the emotional fabric of what has been torn away. At first, it was a crisis to put an end to but then the plan changed, by the end of year 2023, statistics recorded by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to about 1.1 million IDPs (approximately 1,134,828 persons) with 50.3% below 18 years old and 49.7% above 18 years old. The same year saw 81.2% Boko Haram insurgency, 1.6% banditry and 16.2% herder clashes. This crisis was most prominent in the North-West region. The issue was worsening, leading to a humanitarian disaster and as the years grew the IDP numbers rose to 3.5 million persons.</p>
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<p>This rise in persons is alarming. An increase of 2.4 million estimated is not fine. Compensation is not enough! as the number of internally displaced persons increased the government shifted its focus from protection and curbing the disaster to putting infrastructure in place. These infrastructures included the 2025 financial injection and the African Union Convention for Protection and Assistance of IDPs into law to provide food and shelter (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). The policy makers have decided to place these infrastructures but numbers alone cannot capture the true weight of internal displacement. Statistics do not feel hunger, do not grieve the sudden loss of an ancestral home, and do not carry the psychological weight of an uncertain tomorrow.</p>
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<p>The last IDP count done in 2026 by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees shows total displaced persons as over 3.7 million. The causes still remain armed insurgency, farmer-herder conflicts, banditry and climate change across the affected regions including the North-East, Middle Belt and North-West (Borno, Zamfara, Sokoto and Benue).<br />
87% of the IDPs live below the international poverty line and 60% face high levels of food insecurity, close to decades of displacement leads to limited access to healthcare and schooling. How do we fight a problem without digging out its roots. Across Nigeria millions of Nigerians have lost their land, homes and monuments of memories because of armed conflicts, terrorism, communal clashes, flooding and other disasters.<br />
This does not end in loss of structures but lives too. Imagine a mother who carried a child for 9 months &#8211; nurtured and bred, that child wasted! or a father who struggled to give a child all that is needed to watch his own flesh and blood lay on the floor, lifeless.</p>
<p>Displacement hits the most vulnerable demographics hardest. Children are exposed to interrupted education and emotional distress or what about gender-based violence? The uncertainty and emotional weight of being displaced in your own country, your own land.</p>
<p>The Government must address the security gap. There must be increased, professionalized, and transparent security presence in vulnerable regions to prevent the &#8220;unconventional disasters&#8221; that turn citizens into refugees in their own country. Banditry and herder-farmer clashes are often hyper-local. Success requires empowering local traditional leaders, civil society, and grassroots peace committees to mediate disputes before they escalate into armed conflict.</p>
<p>As the policy makes provision for emergency food, clean water and canvas tents. Yet we know that the deepest wounds of displacement are ones that don&#8217;t bleed. Displacement is not just a change of address; it is a sudden, violent fracturing of life, identity and dignity. It is the theft of a person&#8217;s yesterday and the total blinding of their tomorrow. The approach is shifting from short term &#8220;crisis management&#8221; to long term poverty reduction and healing but our main focus should be the roots &#8211; reduce or eradicate banditry, set infrastructure to settle communal crisis and provide resources for all citizens, it is not just about moving the CSR to invest in vocational rehabilitation but removing the cause for a better Nigeria.<br />
Fight for IDP and fight for a better Nigeria! It could be you and it could be I. Together we fix this humanitarian crisis.</p>
<p>EKANEM JOAN<br />
200LVL STUDENT OF DEVELOPMENT AND STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION, UNIVERSITY OF ABUJA.<br />
1ST JULY, 2026.</p>
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