"Nigeria is a real place that feels unreal, but I want to believe that more can be done than just thoughts and prayers."
Ọgọchukwu Chiamaka Agali, MPH'26, spent a month in Nigeria exploring the needs of people living in camps for Internally Displaced Persons fleeing violence
What Displaced People in Nigeria Need
by,
Ọgọchukwu Chiamaka Agali, MPH'26
Returning to Nigeria after 25 years gave me the unique vantage point of both closeness to the culture and distance from the land; to know what to expect without knowing why to expect it. Throughout my four weeks in Abuja, the capital, with its black motorcades jamming traffic for the everyday person, my lifetime of preconceptions and determinations was reshaped by the reality of everyday life. In Abuja, one sees signs of the federal government with its sprawling buildings and politically charged signs, but fails to feel supported by that same government. So, one manages, as my Bolt (rideshare) driver says.
The central theme of my trip to Nigeria was managing. In most conversations with others, people reminded me or asked me to manage. People apologized for making you manage. To manage in Nigeria is to understand that the ground is never truly solid and the internet never truly stable. However, at some point, I became frustrated with being asked to manage, not because managing is bad, but because it is the continual asking of adapting to systemic failure. As the volunteers would later tell me, “If you can explain Nigeria to someone and they can understand it, then they’re mad.” I agree.
This sense of managing one’s problems ironically was the focus of my work. While in Abuja, I worked alongside Naza Agape, a non-profit founded and led by Prayer Nwagboso. Headquartered in Jos, Plateau State, they serve some of the most vulnerable: children, women, and men affected by conflict and instability. My work centered on training volunteers in peer-to-peer mentoring. For this, I adapted the WHO’s Problem Management Plus (PM+), a validated training design for humanitarian settings and relevant to a country where there is a deficit of mental health providers. Through the efforts of the Abuja volunteer lead, Ruthy Akuma, I was able to lead an in-person training for the Abuja team. It is also through Ruthy Akuma that I received a crash course in what displacement in Nigeria is like: Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps situated on unprotected land without shelter, families sleeping on empty cement bags, and citizens bothered by the issue but too afraid to speak out in fear of retaliation.
The second training included individuals from Jos, including previous beneficiaries, those serving in the National Youth Service, and locals who just wanted to help. All of them were young and navigating their own complex lives, and yet none of them shied away from the suffering in Northern Nigeria. Through the different modules, I learned more about their own lives and feelings regarding the situation at hand. As one volunteer, Austin, recounted that in settings such as this, a person’s mindset is everything; it can determine if you will live or if you will give up and die. The problems facing people are diverse and no one training can substitute what is sorely needed. However, Olamide reminded us all that self-empowerment is an important trait for any person to learn in order to survive here.
By the end of my time in Abuja, I had a newfound grace for my parents’ generation and a reverent respect for the serial volunteers who remain committed to serving those abandoned by the system. The government’s failure to its people is a public health crisis. Nigeria does not need thoughts and prayers, but action and support. The struggling infrastructure, the nothingness given to those escaping conflict, the desire to work for jobs that do not exist, all of these are a debt unpaid by the government. Nigeria, although it feels unreal at times, is a real place filled with real people who are owed safety and dignity and more than just mere survival.
I would like to thank Geisel’s Center for Global Health Equity for supporting me to have this opportunity.
