Thread by @TheICIR

THREAD 👇🏿

Lost Childhood: The Trauma of growing up in Nigerian IDP camps

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@NigeriaGov #LostChildhood

Fourteen-year-old Samaila Abdulrahman arrived Malkhoi Camp in 2014 tucked by the side of his aged grandmother, both saddled with all their worldly belongings after a journey of 30 kilometres from Gwoza, Borno to Yola, Adamawa State. @ProfZulum bit.ly/3k9if37

The teenager had just witnessed the death of his father who tried to flee from Boko Haram dressed as a woman. Provoked by his audacity to outsmart them with a feminine camouflage, he was killed. #LostChildhood #NorthernNigeria

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Samaila recounted how he and his grandmother escaped death, his eyes filled with tears as he relived the memory.

Life since then has gone ahead for a boy who was forced into an internal displacement shelter at nine, leaving behind his hometown, family and friends. #LostChildhood

Despite his loss, he is determined to start afresh with no parent. "I want to become a doctor, so I can help wounded people,"he said, with his eyes fixated on the Junior School Certificate Examination past question papers in his hands as he prepares for his upcoming examinations.

Before #COVID19 took the world hostage, education had become a safe space to birth big dreams and hopes for children displaced by #BokoHaram. tinyurl.com/y69qeu7s

It was where ambitions of becoming soldiers, doctors, air force pilots, engineers even big dreams of becoming a superstar like famous Nigerian artiste @officialnairam1. #LostChildhood

Read here: tinyurl.com/y69qeu7s

Out of 400, 000 children who arrived at various camps in Maiduguri, Yobe, Gombe, and Adamawa at the ages of 8,9, 10 many had dropped out of school to either marry, used as suicide bombers, or were forced into labour. #LostChildhood

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Read more here on, "Lost Childhood: The Trauma of growing up in Nigerian IDP camps" 👇🏿
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