With 3.3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), Nigeria has the largest population of persons displaced by conflict in Africa, a report released last week has revealed.
The report, “Global Overview 2014: people internally displaced by conflict and violence,” by the Internal Displaced Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) stated that the number of internally displaced persons in Nigeria is approximately a third of the IDPs in Africa and 10 per cent of IDPs in the world.
While the report noted that displacement is caused by a connection of interrelated factors, it highlighted violence, flood and storms as the main cause of displacement in Nigeria.
“Multiple complex causes trigger displacement, providing significant challenges to governments and humanitarians on the ground,” says Alfredo Zamudio, Director of IDMC.
“Violence, abuses, and forced evictions all add to the conflict-mix in many of these situations, while in places such as Nigeria we see how challenging life becomes for those already displaced by conflict when they are struck down again by severe floods and storms.”
According to the report, 470,500 persons were displaced in Nigeria in 2013 alone placing it as the country with the third highest number of displaced persons in the world. Nigeria is only ranked behind Syria with 6.5 million IDPs and Colombia with 5.7 million IDPs.
The report observed an increase in attacks by the extremist Boko sect Haram, heavy-handed counter insurgency operations and ongoing inter-communal violence as reasons for the unprecedented rise in IDPs in Nigeria in 2013.
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