Increasing food scarcity has forced people displaced by Boko Haram terrorists in the Northeast to leave families hosting them in preference for Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs’ camps. This has resulted into fears that the lack of food could drive people to desperate measures including selling their possessions and trading sex for food.
This was disclosed on Wednesday by the European Commission’s humanitarian arm, ECHO, which stated that nine in 10 of Nigeria’s 2.2 million Internally Displaced People are living with host families in the northeast rather than in camps, amid food shortages that are raising tension in many households.
According to the head of ECHO’s Central Africa office, Thomas Dehermann-Roy, “it is easier to host your neighbours, friends and family when everything is fine, but when food becomes scarce, tensions are raised.
“Some people are moving to camps as the living situation with host families becomes too harsh – it is a worrying trend and sign of a deteriorating situation.”
ECHO believes that around two-third of people uprooted by conflict and four in five host families in northeast Nigeria said food was their most pressing and unfulfilled need.
Comments