Just last weekend, a new suicide bombing hit Maiduguri's busy market, killing one person and injuring 18 others. Over the past year, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari's government has made repeated announcements that Boko Haram is close to being defeated, and Shettima considers the battle 'over' and predicts that hundreds of thousands of displaced people will have returned to their homes by Mayīut this is the cradle of Boko Haram Islamists and they have not disappeared.

The schools, which were closed for two years, reopened last month. Soldiers and checkpoints are less noticeable and merchants and passers-by have returned to the centre city's sidewalks. The city's ceasefire has been pushed back four hours to 10:00 pm. Still Maiduguri, after years of being under siege, has a semblance of normal life compared with the devastated hinterland. Neighbours have organised aid, growing food for the most needy, bringing them clothes and sheets and cooking utensils.īut 'resources are overstretched, especially with regards to water and sanitation, with regards to hospital facilities, with regards to even food security issues,' the Borno state governor, Kashim Shettima, told AFP. Today many refugees are squatters on construction sites, in schools, in public housing, while thousands of others are taken in by relatives or members of their ethnic group, often Kanuri or Hausa. 'I couldn't just sit there and watch people die of hunger, I had to help them,' said Baba Kura Al-Kahi, the boss of these hosting communities, a local businessman who made his fortune in real estate and in 2013 turned over some land he owned to the displaced.

Today the family is living in a so-called 'hosting community', one of hundreds of such private places where refugees are sheltered around the city. A local merchant had welcomed them to his home and fed them for a year, the scar-faced old man told AFP.īut then they had to leave because the financial burden became too much, Bukar said. The camps set up for displaced people are not sufficient, so many residents of Maiduguri have opened their doors to these victims of conflict.īut now years later the refugees still cannot return to their home villages, and struggling city residents are starting to blame the influx for problems in the community.īetween 70 to 90 percent of the displaced in Maiduguri have relied on the compassion of the local people to survive.īukar and his family have never stayed at a camp. Around one million people have flooded the capital of Borno state seeking to escape the insurgency that Boko Haram has waged since 2009.

Boko haram insurgency