Majority of close to 2 million Nigerians driven from their homes by the conflict with Boko Haram cannot return because of a lack of security, and aid agency said on Wednesday.
About 1.8 million people have been displaced in Nigeria by the conflict with the Islamist insurgency, which has left at least 20,000 dead and shows little sign of ending as it drags into its ninth year, Reuters reports.
According to a report by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), 86 percent of internally displaced people were not ready to return home in the immediate future. 84 percent of them cite insecurity as the main reason for wanting to stay put, the report further said.
The NRC report further said that only about six in 10 people said they wanted to return to their villages at some point, but could not do so now.
Continued attacks by the militants have forced those who have tried to return home to flee back to safer camps and cities.
“While the end game is for communities to return home, the unfortunate truth is that pushing people back now will have harmful consequences,” Jan Egeland, NRC secretary general, said in a statement.
Egeland further noted that despite Boko Haram’s increased attacks on displaced people recently, they still feel safer in camps and urban centers than in their communities.
The Nigerian government and military have repeatedly said the insurgency has been “defeated”.
Since the beginning of April, Boko Haram has killed 381 civilians in Nigeria and Cameroon, more than double the amount dead in the preceding five months, Amnesty International said last month.
The NRC survey did not take into account the roughly 200,000 refugees who have fled to neighboring countries such as Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
The humanitarian crisis in northern Nigeria is now one of the biggest in the world, with $1 billion needed to fund relief efforts in 2017, the United Nations says, the report said.
