Benue— In the dusty corners of Nigeria's displacement camps, a disturbing pattern has taken root. What began as temporary shelters for people fleeing violence have morphed into semi-permanent settlements where families have lived for five, seven, or even ten years.
The numbers tell a sobering story. As of April 2024, over 1.3 million internally displaced persons are scattered across ten northern states, with nearly a quarter living in camps. In Benue State alone, more than 510,000 people have been displaced since December 2024, with 60 percent fleeing farmer-herder conflicts.
But according to Sir Richard Akase Inyamkume, a humanitarian coordinator who has spent years working with displaced communities, the real crisis isn't just the displacement itself—it's how Nigeria is managing it.
"Camps were never meant to be permanent homes," says Inyamkume, who coordinates the Nigeria Local Coalition Accelerator and founded the Ambassadors of Dialogue, Climate and Reintegration. "When people spend years waiting for food handouts, they lose more than their land. They lose their sense of purpose, their dignity, their future."
The High Cost of Long-Term Camps
Walk through any displacement camp in northeastern Nigeria, and you'll see the consequences of prolonged encampment. Young men idle away afternoons with nothing productive to do. Women queue for hours for food distributions that barely feed their families. Children grow up knowing only camp life, their ambitions limited by fences and aid schedules.
In December 2024, Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum ordered the closure of all official IDP camps, claiming they had successfully contained the insurgency. But human rights groups pushed back hard. Amnesty International warned that forcing people back to unsafe villages would violate their right to life.
The reality on the ground is messy. At Gubio Camp near Maiduguri, Rufai—a resident who stayed behind after the official closure—now sharpens knives to survive.
"The feeding has been stopped," he told reporters in January. "People here find a way to feed themselves."
This is what dependency looks like. And according to Inyamkume, it's a crisis of humanitarian design, not just circumstance.
When Aid Becomes a Trap
Traditional humanitarian response focuses on keeping people alive—food, shelter, and medical care. These are essential, life-saving interventions. But they weren't designed to last for years.
"The longer people stay in camps, the more they internalize that their survival depends on handouts," Inyamkume explains. "Young adults lose motivation to work. Communities begin to believe they're victims who can only wait for help. That's not just economic dependency—it's psychological stagnation."
Research backs this up. Studies show that displaced persons who experience prolonged camp life face unique vulnerabilities beyond ordinary poverty, including loss of livelihoods, social breakdown, and deep psychological trauma.
The social costs multiply over time. Gender-based violence increases. Youth become vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups. Drug and alcohol abuse creeps in. Tensions with host communities—who see aid flowing to camps while their own needs go unmet—can spark new conflicts.
Fourteen-year-old Dooshima Kwaghbee, living in Benue's Mega Camp, captures the paradox. She fled her village in 2024 after armed men attacked. "We live here, but it's not easy," she says. "The food isn't enough." Yet she's grateful for one thing: she can continue her schooling without fear of attack.
That mixture of relief and hardship defines camp life. Safety, yes. But at what long-term cost?
A Different Vision: Integration, Not Isolation
Inyamkume proposes a fundamentally different approach—one that replaces long-term camps with community-based reintegration anchored in livelihoods and local leadership.
Instead of keeping displaced families in isolated camps, his model would temporarily absorb them into existing economic clusters within host communities. Farmers would join farming associations. Traders would integrate into market unions. Fishermen would work with fishing cooperatives.
"Think of it as economic fostering," he explains. "A displaced family with farming skills gets placed with a farmers' association in the host community. They share land, tools, equipment. They work together on joint projects—maybe a cassava processing center or a poultry cooperative. They share costs and profits."
The benefits ripple outward. Displaced persons regain productive roles and self-respect. Host communities gain additional labor and expanded economic activity. Instead of competition for scarce resources, you create synergy.
The United Nations Development Programme has embraced similar principles, supporting measures that help displaced people rebuild through livelihood opportunities, job creation, and community-based integration.
How It Would Work
Inyamkume's model rests on five pillars:
- Local Leadership: Communities—not distant agencies—design and lead the reintegration process. Local government areas, traditional leaders, women's groups, and youth organizations jointly identify opportunities and monitor progress.
- Skills-Based Placement: Each displaced household is profiled to identify their background, skills, and aspirations. Then they're matched with appropriate livelihood clusters—agriculture, market trading, carpentry, metalwork, and agro-processing.
- Shared Resources and Joint Projects: Members pool accommodation, land, workspaces, and equipment. They might establish fish pond cooperatives, community gardens, irrigation clusters, or milling centers. Everyone contributes labor; everyone shares in the output.
- Training and Mentorship: While integrated, displaced persons receive skills development—agricultural extension training, food processing, business management, and vocational skills. Local association members become mentors.
- Government Support: Instead of building and maintaining camps, governments provide small grants, tools, startup kits, and land access. They formally recognize these livelihood clusters and establish accountability systems.
Evidence From the Field
This isn't just theory. Versions of this approach are already working elsewhere in Africa.
Uganda's self-reliance model allows refugees to farm and integrate into local economies. Rwanda's community integration policy encourages joint projects between displaced persons and host communities. In Ethiopia's Somali Region, resettlement and integration programs have shown promise where displaced people received local assistance and built positive relations with host communities.
Even in Nigeria, some local government areas in Adamawa and Borno have piloted reintegration through cooperative farming clusters with encouraging results.
The obstacles are real. Challenges include limited access to land and other livelihood resources, strain on shared services, poverty in host communities, and inadequate planning. But these are solvable problems, not fundamental barriers.
The Psychology of Empowerment
Perhaps the most powerful argument for livelihood-based reintegration is psychological.
Extended camp life creates what Inyamkume calls "psychological stagnation." People become accustomed to predictable distributions. Planning for the future feels pointless. Identity becomes tied to victimhood.
Meaningful work counters all of this. It creates structure, purpose, and routine. It reduces exposure to negative influences and protection risks. Youth stay engaged and productive. Women gain economic leverage. Men regain responsibility and self-respect.
"Purpose-driven engagement is the strongest antidote to dependency," Inyamkume insists. "When a farmer can plant crops again, when a trader can sell in the market, when a mother can provide for her children through her own work—that's when healing really begins."
UNICEF programs in Benue's camps have created girls' football teams and psychosocial activities, recognizing that emotional recovery requires more than basic survival needs.
The Government's Role
For this vision to become reality, local and state governments must shift from managing camps to facilitating integration.
Inyamkume calls for Local Government Areas to develop reintegration action plans that map communities, identify livelihood opportunities, define the roles of local associations, establish monitoring systems, and allocate resources.
"LGAs should provide idle public land, disused community buildings for training centers, access to existing markets, extension workers for agriculture support," he says. "States should ensure security so displaced persons can work safely. And both levels must maintain transparent accountability."
Nigeria is working to domesticate the Kampala Convention on internal displacement, with the bill moving through the Senate in 2024. The 2021 Nigeria IDP Policy already provides a national framework. What's needed now is implementation that reflects these livelihood-centered principles.
Borno's Controversial Camp Closures
The Borno State government's 2024 decision to close informal camps and return thousands of displaced people to their ancestral homes sparked intense debate.
Governor Zulum argued that the closures would reduce dependency on government and NGOs. But humanitarian partners worried that some return areas remain insecure. Human rights groups noted that 70 percent of Maiduguri was submerged when the Alau Dam collapsed in September 2024, killing at least 150 people and displacing 419,000 more.
The lesson? Returns must be safe, dignified, informed, and voluntary. And they must be accompanied by genuine reintegration support—not just transportation home and vague promises.
"If you send people back to destroyed villages without livelihoods, without security, without a plan—they'll just become displaced again," Inyamkume warns. "That's not solving displacement. That's multiplying trauma."
A Call for Transformation
After years of watching humanitarian responses fall short, Inyamkume's message is urgent: Nigeria needs a fundamental shift in how it thinks about displacement.
"Camps are not homes. Dependency is not destiny," he says. "We have the tools, the knowledge, the local capacity to do this differently. What we need is the political will to put displaced persons at the center—not as passive victims waiting for charity, but as capable people who need pathways back to productive, dignified lives."
The UN Secretary-General's Action Agenda on Internal Displacement emphasizes strong participation by displaced persons and local communities, leadership by national and local authorities, and improved engagement of development actors.
For Nigeria's 1.3 million displaced persons scattered across camps and host communities, the choice is clear. Continue with a system that breeds dependency and erodes dignity. Or embrace a transformational model that restores humanity, rebuilds livelihoods, and strengthens social cohesion.
The camps were never meant to be permanent. It's time Nigeria treated displacement as what it should be—a temporary setback, not a life sentence.
Sir Richard Akase Inyamkume is Coordinator of the Nigeria Local Coalition Accelerator, Founder and President of Ambassadors of Dialogue, Climate and Reintegration, and Registrar-General of the Institute for Climate Smart Research and Policy Advocacy. He holds multiple humanitarian and professional designations including KSJI, FDMSS, FICSR, FIMC, CMC, HLF, CLF, and ACGA.
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