For five months, the displaced people living in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp in Kuta town in Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger State have been living in Dr Idris Ibrahim Primary School, a four-block school.

These IDPs have said that they tired of remaining in the camp as they cite hunger, poor sanitary conditions, poor sleeping space and poor hygiene as reasons why they no longer want to stay in the camp.

When The Nation visited the camp on Monday and spoke to some of the displaced people, they disclosed that they had to stay a week without food from the government, adding that during that period, the adults had to rely heavily on the youth.

Zakari Galadima, who is one of the elders in the camp, said they had to stay a week without food before the government responded to their cry to bring food for them.

“We stayed a week without food in this camp last week. During this period, the youth were kind to us and helped us tremendously. Relying and leveraging on their strength, the youths helped to contribute to ensuring that there was food in the camp.”

Galadima said that the youth, during the trying period, engaged in menial jobs just to gather money for the people in the camp to feed.

“The youth went out to look for odd jobs; some of them went for mining, others took to construction work. All the proceeds they got, they joined everything together and brought food for the camp to feed.”

Fati Salihu also corroborated this, saying that the government was aware that they had no food as the chairman of Shiroro council told them that it was being sorted out.

“During this period, we had to help one another. Those who had saved little over some time shared it with others. We had to scramble and beg for food.”