Nigeria: Displaced Borno, Adamawa Residents Lament Inability to Return Home
Written by Njadvara Musa, Maiduguri
Nigerian Guardian
THE Director of Catholic Social Communication in Maiduguri Diocese, Rev. Gideon Obasogie, has said that two months after the capture of 11 towns in Borno and Adamawa states in the North East sub-region by Boko Haram, residents could still not return to their houses and places of worship.
According to him, 185 churches in the diocese were torched and about 190, 545 people displaced.
Obasogie who disclose this yesterday in a statement on the “state of captured towns” said the “ransacking and torching” of churches in the captured towns and villages have already displaced many priests, who have been taking refuge in either Yola or Maiduguri in the last one or two months.
He described the capturing of towns and torching of places of worship as “sad, heart arching and potentially dangerous to the territorial integrity and common good of Nigeria.”
The statement also reads in part: “It is over 30 days now that our Church communities in Gulak, Shuwa, Michika, Bazza and other places were sacked by the callous attacks of the Boko Haram terrorists. While Gwoza and Magadali have been under the tyrannical and despotic control of the terrorists, our priests have been displaced, while other citizens, who were supposed to celebrate their independence as free citizens of a free nation, are rather counting their losses and regrets as they have been displaced. Where is the freedom?
Life is really terribly difficult. We are waiting eagerly to go back home, even as it is obvious that we are going to reconstruct our looted and burnt houses and ecclesial structures. We have been sacked for months, sleeping in uncompleted buildings, camps and school premises. We have been absorbed into houses of relations and friends in sixties and seventies.”
On the displaced priests and residents, Obasogie said: “Meal time is always difficult and shameful. We have counted weeks rolling into months, must we also count years? We are waiting to go back home! Our minds are greatly troubled, do we think about our status, or about our family members yet to be connected with ever since we fled our homes?
“Do we worry about our aged parents who were not so strong to run, they always fed us with words of encouragement and wisdom. Do we worry about our sick members, women and infants who had been trapped? Most of them, we heard, have been raped and killed. We worry about the health, education and future of our children. We have got a lot of questions yet to be answered.”
On re-opening of closed schools, Obasogie said: “Our children have not been fed and well clothed, so resumption of schools is practically out of our calculation. In our opinion, if thousands of Nigerian children can’t go to school, then in the long run “Boko is really Haram.”
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| Map of Adamawa state in northeastern Nigeria. |
Nigerian Guardian
THE Director of Catholic Social Communication in Maiduguri Diocese, Rev. Gideon Obasogie, has said that two months after the capture of 11 towns in Borno and Adamawa states in the North East sub-region by Boko Haram, residents could still not return to their houses and places of worship.
According to him, 185 churches in the diocese were torched and about 190, 545 people displaced.
Obasogie who disclose this yesterday in a statement on the “state of captured towns” said the “ransacking and torching” of churches in the captured towns and villages have already displaced many priests, who have been taking refuge in either Yola or Maiduguri in the last one or two months.
He described the capturing of towns and torching of places of worship as “sad, heart arching and potentially dangerous to the territorial integrity and common good of Nigeria.”
The statement also reads in part: “It is over 30 days now that our Church communities in Gulak, Shuwa, Michika, Bazza and other places were sacked by the callous attacks of the Boko Haram terrorists. While Gwoza and Magadali have been under the tyrannical and despotic control of the terrorists, our priests have been displaced, while other citizens, who were supposed to celebrate their independence as free citizens of a free nation, are rather counting their losses and regrets as they have been displaced. Where is the freedom?
Life is really terribly difficult. We are waiting eagerly to go back home, even as it is obvious that we are going to reconstruct our looted and burnt houses and ecclesial structures. We have been sacked for months, sleeping in uncompleted buildings, camps and school premises. We have been absorbed into houses of relations and friends in sixties and seventies.”
On the displaced priests and residents, Obasogie said: “Meal time is always difficult and shameful. We have counted weeks rolling into months, must we also count years? We are waiting to go back home! Our minds are greatly troubled, do we think about our status, or about our family members yet to be connected with ever since we fled our homes?
“Do we worry about our aged parents who were not so strong to run, they always fed us with words of encouragement and wisdom. Do we worry about our sick members, women and infants who had been trapped? Most of them, we heard, have been raped and killed. We worry about the health, education and future of our children. We have got a lot of questions yet to be answered.”
On re-opening of closed schools, Obasogie said: “Our children have not been fed and well clothed, so resumption of schools is practically out of our calculation. In our opinion, if thousands of Nigerian children can’t go to school, then in the long run “Boko is really Haram.”
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