“Living in constant fear”: PWDs are paying a hefty price in Nigeria’s raging war with bandits

Zamfara, Nigeria (Minority Africa) — It is a little past two on a June afternoon. Aisha Muhammed holds her four-year-old son, Ahmad, in her left hand as he assists her to a green plastic chair. She leans against a nearby tree so he can clean the dust on the chair and then she settles.

Every day, Muhammed, who is blind, scours through Gusau, the capital of Nigeria’s northwestern state of Zamfara, for alms. That Saturday afternoon, she had learnt about a nonprofit distributing food item to displaced people. An hour earlier, she was at Tudunwada, another part of the city begging for alms as well.

The mother of three, who currently stays at the camp for internally displaced persons in Tsunami, has been struggling to fend for her family and take care of herself without a source of employment.

“Life has not been easy since we left our village,” she tells Minority Africa. “Although there are times people come here to distribute food and money to us, we mostly go out to look for what to eat.”

Muhammed is one of many other persons with disabilities in the region contending with an uncertain future amid increasing attacks by bandits.

She only moved to Gusau five months ago after heavily armed men, locally known as bandits, sacked her village, Rijiya, in the dead of the night. Before the siege, the armed gangs had written to the village about the impending attack on the farming community.

However, when the date mentioned in the letter passed with no activity, the villagers essentially forgot about it and went about their lives. At the time, the 25-year-old Muhammed, sold Kulikuli, a local snack made from groundnut, for a living as well as kernel oil.

“Life was relatively okay for us. After the notice, the men started protecting the village,” she recalls.

Muhammed’s husband, who originally is a farmer, was also one of the volunteers guarding the community at night. One Thursday night, a few minutes after 10 pm, armed gangs stormed the village. They came riding motorcycles and shooting indiscriminately.

“My sister held my hands as we ran and hid behind one mountain,” she says. “She had to drag me at some point, because I was even pregnant at the time, to ensure we escaped from them.”

No one thought Muhammed would survive the attack but alongside her sister, she fled to Geba, about thirty minutes’ walk away from Rijiyar, where she became unconscious and was taken to a clinic in the town for treatment.

“We later learnt they killed about five people and abducted many,” she says, her voice punctuated by the seams of her grief.

Unlike Nigeria’s northeast where Boko Haram and its faction, ISIL-affiliated armed group (ISWAP), hold sway, banditry is rife in the country’s northwest. Many of the groups are believed to comprise mostly ethnic Fulanis who for decades have endured a simmering herder-farmer crisis amid worsening climate change challenges and grievances rising from a perceived deep-rooted injustice meted against pastoral communities.

Towards the end of 2011, things changed as armed attacks began in Zamfara following the flouting of an armed group called “Kungiyar Gayu” (meaning an association of young boys).

Members of the gang considered it a pro-Fulani group aimed at liberating them from the high-handedness of security agents, traditional rulers and politicians. Other criminal groups have since joined the rank and file of the gang as the conflict rages.

They have sacked villages and imposed levies. They have also attacked an air force fighter jet and a train, and have kidnapped students for ransom on multiple occasions.

An estimated 12,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced across the northwestern states of Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara and Kaduna, says Abuja-based policy think tank, Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD).

Living On The Fringe

Now in Gusau, Muhammed reunites with her husband and two kids who escaped the attack in their village, Rijiya by hitchhiking. She recalls a moment when her husband suggested the family return to their village.

“[I said], ‘It is still not safe for me. Although I’ve no work, I would prefer to stay here than to live in constant fear of attacks from bandits,’” she tells Minority Africa.

“Humanitarian relief and NGO assistance for IDPs are generally lacking in the bandit-afflicted northwest,” Lagos-based James Barnett, a non-resident fellow at Hudson Institute in Washington DC, says. 

“Most IDPs receive inconsistent support, if any, owing in part to the fact that there is not a concerted federal response to the humanitarian crisis.”

Several international laws such as Article 11 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disability guarantees the protection of PWDs in situations of risk, including armed conflicts.

Sadly, persons with disabilities remain yet another forgotten group of people in the evolving conflict in the region. They often face barriers to accessing humanitarian support such as food, sanitation, and medical assistance, despite often being highlighted as an at-risk group.

“All to say, the livelihoods of IDPs in the northwest are arguably even more precarious than those of IDPs in other parts of the country,” Barnett adds.

A Silver Lining. But Is it Enough?

More than one billion people are living with disabilities globally, 16 percent of which are attributable to armed conflict.

Some people, particularly women and girls with disabilities, are physically unable to flee violence and many are vulnerable to violence, including sexual abuse.

Recent data on people with disabilities in Nigeria are hard to come by, but according to a 2018 report from the World Bank, about 29 million Nigerians are living with some form of disability.

Amina Rahma, who lives with a physical disability, saw the condition of people with disabilities souring as a result of the decade-old conflict in Zamfara, the epicentre of insecurity in the Northwest.

According to her, PWDs bear the greatest brunt of most attacks in the region, “It is difficult for everyone, but for the physically disabled; it is much more. They cannot flee during attacks, so [bandits] just shoot them off. Many of them can now be seen in bigger towns because even the government does not have any data or plans to protect them from the hotspots.”

The Nigerian government passed the discrimination against persons with disabilities (prohibition) law, but their needs are not yet prioritized in national plans, leaving them open to widespread discrimination and violence.

In her little corner, through a nonprofit called Rebuilding Hope on Wheels Initiative, Rahma is raising awareness about social inclusion and sexual abuse in the region.

She wheels herself forward, a little away from the dimly lit spot in her sitting room, and says, “Women and girls with disabilities are increasingly becoming victims of war, especially now that it is a situation of the strongest survives because of insecurity.”

“We sensitise and keep discussing sexual violence. We’ve come to understand the overbearing culture of silence among women and girls when they are abused, not to talk of people with disabilities,” she adds.

Irene Patrick-Ogbogu, executive director of Disabilities Rights Advocacy Center (DRAC), explains that PWDs face exclusion, especially in conflict areas, due in part to the absence of “disability disaggregated” data. This, she says, makes it impossible to properly target programs, such as emergency response and Humanitarian relief, for persons with disabilities.

Muhammed’s husband, a farmer, eventually abandoned the family and returned to Rijiyar when she would not budge to his constant appeal. She explains his departure saying, “He wanted to catch the planting season.”

Nonetheless, she nurses a familiar fear.

“I know I cannot rely on begging for the rest of my life,” she says. “I need to have a business to take care of myself and my children. I want a better future for them, and I can’t give them the kind of life I want while still begging on the street with them.”

As we speak, Muhammad stretches her hands forward, and her son, Ahmad, grabs them.

“The little I make every day is used to take care of my kids, and pay my eldest son’s school fee. The younger one is going to Islamiyah (an Islamic school),” her voice came back wounded. “And it is all on me.”

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Edited by Caleb Okereke, Uzoma Ihejirika, and Cassandra Roxburgh.