Issa Ousseini |
Nordiré (Niger) (EFE).- In recent weeks, 10,800 people have had to flee their homes in the Niger region of Ouro-Gueladio, close to the capital Niamey and the border with Burkina Faso, due to the unsustainable pressure of jihadist groups, which murder, threaten, beat and rob the villagers.
The mayor of the rural commune of Ouro-Gueladio, Harouna Hama Ali, has lived in exile for almost a year with his family in Nordiré, a village on the west bank of the Niger River from which you can see the city of Niamey, built on the opposite bank.
This man in his forties fled from Ouro-Gueladio for fear of being assassinated by the jihadists, who in September 2022 dynamited the city hall facilities and the local radio station before kidnapping three municipal officials.
“Of the three kidnapped, one was recently released and has lived in Niamey ever since, but we have not heard from the other two,” Ali told EFE last Saturday, who was lucky enough to be on a trip to Niamey when the jihadists kidnapped his three collaborators.
According to the exiled mayor, the mass departure of the inhabitants of Ouro-Gueladio since last July 4, after an ultimatum from the terrorists to the population, is a consequence of the pressure exerted in recent years by the jihadist groups (Al Qaeda and the Islamic State) that operate in the so-called zone of the three borders, where the limits of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger converge.
“At first, the jihadists came to the villages just to lead prayers, then they began to collect tithes, kidnap animals and publicly punish villagers who did not apply their Koranic teachings,” Ali explains, describing the physical mistreatment they inflicted on the inhabitants of the area as “inhumane”.
Over time, many households lost all their animals, key to the subsistence of the population, he points out.
Two murders and a 72-hour ultimatum
This ordeal, especially for the inhabitants of the villages of Ouro-Gueladio on the west bank of the Goroubi River, the most exposed to attack and closest to Burkina Faso, led the families to accept the 72-hour ultimatum that the jihadists gave them on July 4 to leave the area, after killing two villagers.
Those affected are 1,570 families, or 10,884 people, from about twenty villages and hamlets, who left their homes to take refuge in the capital of the municipality of Ouro-Gueladio, in the nearby town of Torodi and in villages on the outskirts of Niamey, according to a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on July 9.
Some thirty of these families traveled – some on foot – the 50 kilometers that separate their villages from the outskirts of Niamey, where they are temporarily housed in lots under construction thanks to the solidarity of the local population.
“I host several displaced families, about ten men, fifteen women and many children and adolescents. The women and children sleep inside my house and the men in the nearby mosque,” explains Mory Rafan, a resident of the area, to EFE.
From asking for the “zakat” to taking the cattle
Septuagenarian Garba Oumarou, who has two wives and several children and is staying in a fenced plot in Nordiré, claims that the terrorists stole “more than 80 heads of oxen and small ruminants”.
“When they arrive in the villages, they go above all to houses with many animals to impose ‘zakat’ (obligatory almsgiving, one of the five pillars of Islam). At first, they were content with taking two or three heads, but then they took the whole herd,” says Oumarou, her voice quavering.
But the bitterness that gnaws at him comes, above all, from the loss of one of his oldest sons, who, according to his account, was kidnapped and murdered by armed men two years ago.
The jihadists also take the women’s possessions, as explained by Maïmouna Hama, a 47-year-old widow who no longer owns anything apart from her late husband’s land.
“The few heads of oxen and small ruminants that I had and that were my main source of income were taken by the assailants. I only have the land left, but its exploitation is compromised in this campaign after our forced departure from the town, ”she says with sad eyes.
The Nigerian Interior Minister, Hamadou Adamou Souley, traveled to Ouro-Gueladio on July 13 to distribute 85 tons of food, and promised that the exile of these 10,000 people would be for a short time thanks to the military operations carried out in the area.