INTRODUCTION

This study intents to examines the challenges confronting the national re integration strategies in

the north eastern region and the focuses area of Borno State Nigeria. Nigeria has been battling

helplessly with insurgency perpetrated by Boko Haram terrorist group. Boko Haram is

predominant in the North-eastern part of Nigeria in states like Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. Their

central philosophy is ``Western Education is Forbidden’’. They are known to devastatingly

attack churches, mosques, schools, police stations, agencies, private and public owned facilities

with a kind of guerrilla warfare tactics (Atanda, 2017).

The advent of Boko haram, a religious terrorist groupsince 2009, led to many persons being

displaced from their homesin the North-eastern part of Nigeria. These persons are known as

internally displacedpersons or IDPs.IDPs refers to persons or groups of persons who have been

forced to flee their homes, as a result of armedconflict, situations of generalized violence,

violations of human rights or natural human-made disasters (UnitedNations, 1998).

It was from the year 2009 that Nigeria witnessed an upshot in the number of displaced persons.

This was a period when the Boko haram pandemic made its voice louder. According to the

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (2016) since the start of the

conflict in 2009, more than 20,000 people have been killed, countless women and girls abducted

and children drafted as suicide bombers into Boko Haram. Up to 2.1 million people fled their

homes at the height of the conflict, 1.8 million of whom are currently internally displaced and

0.2 million in neighboring countries of Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. Corroborating further, Soni,

Kingsley and Ndahi (2016) put it that currently Nigeria has 2.15 million persons have been

displaced from their homes and communities. Furthermore, the Internal Displacement

Monitoring Centre (2016) puts that 12.6 percent displaced persons were due to communal

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clashes/Fulani militants, 2.4 percent by natural disasters and 85 percent as a result of insurgency

attacks by exterimist. This shows that the so-called religious terrorism contributes the highest

percentage of the high number of IDPs and Nigerian refugees.

Meanwhile, the terrific fundamentalist terror group has continued to carry-out its campaign of

terror in the north east, thereby making the humanitarian situations in the region more precarious.

Efforts by Nigerian military to quell the insurgency have not produced expected result.

Notwithstanding, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), the body responsible

for managing disasters and emergency related issues in Nigeria, has found itself laden with the

heavy burden of caring for Nigerians affected by the Boko Haram insurgency. The African

Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have shown

appreciable concern to Nigeria, but the Boko Haram violence has remained unabated. If Nigeria

does not address the unrest, the threat may produce more debilitating humanitarian crises not

only affecting the north easthten region but for Nigeria as a whole.

Given the above persistence of the violence, Nigeria now ranks as the country with the highest

number of people displaced by conflict in Africa, estimated at 3.3 million, and third in the world

after Syria with 6.5 million and Colombia with 5.7 million (This Day Live, 2016, February 03).

In Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, the most affected states, nearly 7 million people are in need of

humanitarian assistance, of which children constitute more than 50 per cent (UN) OCHA n. d.).

Available figures reveal that as of April 2015, Nigeria had IDPs in 24 of its 36 states (This Day

Live, 2016, February 03). The Nigerian military has intensified operations, but the activities of

the terrorists still pose serious security threats (Barungi, Ogunleye and Zamba, 2015). The Boko

Haram rebels have also continued to carry out mass abductions, especially of women. Till date,

some of the 200 girls abducted from Government Girls College in Chibok, Borno State, on 15

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April 2014, are still yet to be found (Barungi, Ogunleye and Zamba, 2015). Extreme human

rights abuses by the insurgents have garnered international attention.

The rise of Boko Haram terrorism in Nigeria has marked a tragic trajectory in the overall quest

for national development in the most populous black country on earth. This is so because its

activities, characterized by high level heinousness and raw brutality, have created scenaris of

forced migration and general citizen displacement at community, local government, state and

regional levels. For instance, it is staggering to indicate that from 2009 to 2010 the number of

IDPs in Nigeria rose to 100,000 and from 2010 to 2011 it increased to 130,000. From 2011 to

2012, the number of IDP’s rose to 200,000. From 2012 to 2013 IDP’s grew to 290,000 and from

May 2013 to March 2014 it decreased slightly to 250,000. From May-June 2014, it rose again to

436,608 and from August to December IDP’s drastically rose to over 600,000 persons (UN,2014

cited in Imasuen, 2015). By 2015, in northern Nigeria alone, UNICEF (September 18, 2015)

reports that 1.2 million children and now Nigeria has over 2million refugees as shown in 2020

statistics nearly 3..4 million people have been displaced by boko haram in lake chad basin,more

than half of them younger than 5, were forced to flee their homes, while an additional 265,000

were uprooted in Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Including over 2.7 million internally displaced

persons in the North Eastern region of Nigeria.

This situation no doubt has impinged on the country’s development feasibility as revealed by the

following statistics: according to the World Investment Report (WIR) (2013), FDI flows into

Nigeria dropped by 21.3 percent in just one year—from $8.9billionin 2011 to $7billionin 2012.

Also, According to the UNCTAD report, FDI flows to Nigeria fell to $6.1billion (N933.3billion)

in 2010, a decline of about 29 percent from the $8.65billion (N1.33trillion) realized in 2009

fiscal year. Also, statistics obtained from the 2010 annual report by the Central Bank of Nigeria

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(CBN) showed that the total foreign capital inflow into the Nigerian economy in 2010 was $5.99

billion. The record showed that FDI represented about 78.1 percent drop from $3.31 billion in

2009 (Okereocha, 2012).

Internally Displaced person in Nigeria suffer disproportionately from different problems such as

malnutrition, sickness, insecurity in the camps, lack of access to education, idle among others

(Misliu,2015).

The vulnerability of Displayed person is a major reason why sustainable national reintegration

must be considered and implemented at shortest delay possible. These strategies will provide

broad methods to reintegrate the displaced person in to society, empower them economically,

enroll the children in schools and expose them to proper healthcare facilities (Diana, 2017).

National reintegration strategy can be view in to different dimensions, be it economical, social or

psychological reintegration. National reintegration strategies is a new methodology for

understanding the experience of remain migrants, or their reintegration strategies

(K.Kuschminder,2017).

This research intents to demonstrate the reintegration strategies differ by type of return migrant,

leading to variation in how far IDPs are able to contribute to Borno state northeastern and

Nigeria in general. The governor of Borno state (Babagana Zulum on 15th Oct,2020) made it

known to the world that there are blacks , whites Chinese as well as Muslim and Christian.

Statement of the Research Problem

The IDPs are regarded as strangers and treated harshly by host communities, the worst evil of

all , they are exposed to severe socio economic challenges such as starvation, accommodation,

unemployment, social discrimination, sexual harassment, child labour, early marriage and its

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attendant teenage pregnancy. They are prone to all sort of health challenges such as vascular

diseases, Maleria, malnutrition, water Born disease and untimely death among others.

Internally Displaced population and especially group like children, the elderly or pregnant

women's are experienced profound psychological distress related to the displacement. And in the

same vain Removal from source of income and livelihood may add to physical and psychological

vulnerability (Ekpa,2016).

Internally Displaced person may be in transit from one place to another, may be in hiding, may

be forced toward unhealthy or uncongenial environment or faced other circumstance that make

them particularly vulnerable; the sociological organization of Displaced communities may have

been destroyed or damage by physical displacement, family groups may be separated or

disrupted, women may forced to assume non-traditional role or face particular vulnerability

(Dahlan,2016).

Internally Displacement to areas where local inhabitants are different group or unreceptive may

increases hazard or internally displaced communities may forced language barriers during

displacement; the conditions of internally displacement raise the suspicious of or lead to abuse

by armed combatants or other parties to conflict; and at the same time Internally Displaced

person may lack identity document essential to receiving benefit or legal recognition in some

cases, fearing persecution displaced person have sometimes got ride of such documents

(Shedrack and Nuarrual H.M.2016).

The IDPs who are lucky to be accommodated in the camp are faced with threat of security as the

insurgents had in many occasions beaten the security and carried out suicide bombing in the

IDPs camp in the Borno state (Tobbias, 2017)

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Research Questions

1. What are the challenges of IDPs in Borno state.

2. What are the challenges of national reintegration strategies in tackling issues of IDPs in

Borno state

Objective of the Study

1. To determine challenges confronting IDPs in Borno state

2. To determine the extend of how IDPs affects the national reintegration strategies.

Scope of the Study

This research is to study the challenges confronting national reintegration strategies in north

eastern Nigeria, this study will be limited to national reintegration strategies in Borno state,

which will touch areas where challenges of the internally Displaced person exist. However the

study is within the period of 2010-2020 which is the duration of ten year and it is observed to be

the time with offshoots of the problem under the study in the research.

Methodology of the Study

This study will adopt the Quantitative research method. The study will be rely on the use of

primary and secondary Data the Data were collected in gathering relevant information. explicitly,

research will gathered it Data from Questionnaire, interview and also news papers magazines and

official publications. The research study will adopt descriptive analysis in the interpretation of

Data.