(Bokkos) In the church in the town of Bokkos transformed into a refuge, survivors of the attacks which left nearly 200 dead in central Nigeria during the Christmas weekend are desperately waiting for food and clothing.
“When the armed men attacked us, we fled, without knowing where to go, seven people from my family died and I don’t know where my children and my grandchildren are,” Lucy Joshua told AFP.
“The government must help us, for now it is residents and the Red Cross who have given us food and clothing,” she says.
“We haven’t eaten since this morning, we need water, we are suffering, no one from the government has helped us but they tell us it will come,” Josephine Matthew, another survivor, told AFP. lost her husband, brothers and children in these attacks.
Nearly 20,000 people, mainly women and children, left the twenty villages in the districts of Bokkos and Barkin Ladi, in the central state of Plateau, attacked between the evening of December 23 and the morning of December 26 . They have since found refuge in makeshift camps set up by the local Red Cross, 23 in total.
Several hundred displaced people are gathered in the Bokkos church, which has insufficient infrastructure. Little access to toilets, drinking water or even healthcare… The survivors stay there in difficult conditions to which is added the despair of having lost everything.
“The attackers burned our houses and our crops, we are in a desperate situation, we need everything,” exclaims Abigail Moses.
The survivors “need urgent humanitarian and psychological support,” Nuruddeen Hussain Magaji, one of the local coordinators of the Nigerian Red Cross, told AFP on Friday.
“They need food, water, clothing, hygiene products” but “also psychological help to help them overcome their trauma,” he insisted, assuring that they have “not nothing received” yet.
The identity of the attackers is not known at this stage.
Help “within two days”
Visiting the region on Wednesday, Nigerian Vice President Kashim Shettima announced the imminent arrival of aid.
“I will supervise their delivery myself,” assured Caleb Mutfwang, the governor of the state.
Yuhanna Audu, spokesperson for the national relief agency (NEMA), told AFP that “distributions should start within the next two days”.
On Tuesday, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu ordered “security agencies to intervene immediately, search every part of the area and apprehend the culprits”, after having “strongly condemned the attacks”.
The populations of north-west and central Nigeria live in terror of attacks by jihadist groups and criminal gangs who pillage villages and kill or kidnap their inhabitants.
For years, a bitter competition has also raged between breeders and farmers in this territory, the latter accusing the former of ransacking their land with their livestock.
Aggravated by climate change and the demographic explosion in this country of 215 million inhabitants, sporadic violence has led to a serious security crisis, between attacks by heavily armed bandits and endless reprisals between communities, but also humanitarian.
The Christmas weekend attacks caused deep emotion on the international scene.
“The cycle of impunity that fuels recurring violence must be urgently broken. The government must also take significant steps to address the underlying root causes and ensure there is no recurrence of this violence,” UN human rights chief Volker Türk responded on Thursday.