Investigation

Nigeria: Sex for survival in Abuja’s New Kuchingoro IDP camp

By Pius Adeleye

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Posted on January 6, 2023 16:21

 © A girl carries a baby on her back at the Kuchingoro internally displaced persons camp, in Abuja, Nigeria June 20, 2020. REUTERS/ Afolabi Sotunde
A girl carries a baby on her back at the Kuchingoro internally displaced persons camp, in Abuja, Nigeria June 20, 2020. REUTERS/ Afolabi Sotunde

Following a spate of terrorist attacks in 2014, many women and children fled their homes and regrouped at IDP camps. One in particular, the New Kuchingoro IDP camp, located at the edge of the Nigerian capital Abuja, is where many women remain in a state of limbo, and where an unpopular sex trade industry has flourished that sees young female residents quietly and carefully sell sex for survival.

In 2014, a humanitarian crisis worsened in Nigeria when several parts of its regions were heavily and constantly plagued with unprecedented terror assaults that targeted women and children.

A 2015 publication of the Global Terrorism Index, reported that the rage of terrorism in 2014 was highly catastrophic, disastrous, and the nation witnessed the biggest havoc and impact of terror attacks—with a record 7,512 deaths, an increase of over 300% since 2013.

Amina (a pseudonym), a victim of a Boko Haram attack in Borno had moved to Abuja in 2014 with several others who had also seen the murderous slays of their relatives and were eventually displaced by the incessant attacks of the terror group. “We have been forgotten and we no longer know the government,” she points at the tents as she speaks to The Africa Report.

The tents in the New Kuchingoro IDP camp are mostly made up of faded canvas,

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