Insurgency and humanitarian crises in Northern Nigeria: The case of Boko Haram

Abstract

Insurgency has become a threat to global peace and security in the 21st century due to the fact that it constitutes the highest contributor to humanitarian crises in the form of rise in human casualties, internally displaced persons, refugee debacles, food insecurity and the spread of various diseases. The paper sets out to analyse the impact of Boko Haram insurgency on humanitarian crises in Northern Nigeria with Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states in focus. It further establishes how the increase in the activities of Boko Haram, continues to generate dire humanitarian consequences to the North East region, the Nigerian society and neighbouring nations at large. This paper adopts the State Fragility theoretical framework as well as the survey method involving the use of questionnaires (the regression technique) and in-depth interview (index matrix and table technique) which focuses on three internally displaced Camps in the region for analysis. The empirical findings indicate that, there is a significant relationship between Boko Haram insurgency and humanitarian crises, when variables such as impact on human casualties (IHC), food insecurity (FI) and internally displaced persons (IDP’s) are held constant, while no significant relationship exists when the variables such as loss of livelihood (LoL) and government response(GR) are held constant. By way of recommendation, the paper advocates the need for the Nigerian government to focus more on reducing human casualties, loss of livelihood, food insecurity and more focus on the rehabilitation of internally displaced persons back to the society, in order to nip the threats emanating from the humanitarian crises and Boko Haram insurgency in the bud in the region. Key words: Boko Haram, insurgency, humanitarian crises, state, security.