Revisiting Internally Displaced Persons, Social Distancing and COVID-19 Crises in Nigeria

The chapter examines the crises faced by internally displaced persons (hereafter IDPs) at the height of Nigeria’s COVID-19 pandemic and post-COVID-19 period. Since the emergence of Nigeria’s fourth republic in 1999, the crises of IDPs have featured consistently in successive government human security and humanitarian plans. According to the Displacement Tracking Matrix data as of May 2021, 2,184,254 IDPs are divided into 447,628 households in Nigeria. Given the inability of the Nigerian government to provide lasting solutions to the drivers of IDPs, such as the Boko Haram insurgency, banditry, and natural disasters, the number of IDPs has continued to increase exponentially. However, given the situations of IDPs in Nigeria during the pre-COVID-19 period, they became vulnerable groups given the condition of shelter and welfare services, the absence of necessary social and health services, and the difficulty in accessing COVID-19 in-kind and financial social protection relief and aid. Amid this, the government’s concept of social distancing was also developed to control the spread of the virus. The chapter seeks to dialogue with the crises faced by internally displaced persons during the COVID-19 period and to demonstrate the practicability of social distancing during the pandemic.