In the villages of Nigeria’s Middle Belt, where fertile plains once sustained generations of farmers, ghost towns now stand as silent witnesses to unrelenting violence. Families who once tilled the soil have been uprooted by armed jihadist invasions, bandit raids, and ISWAP/Boko Haram-led religious terrorism, their homes reduced to charred remnants in the chaos. As of 2025, over 3.5 million people in Northern Nigeria endure this forced exile; the Middle Belt alone accounting for a staggering share, their displacement a significant fracture in the nation’s social fabric.
This crisis unfolds against a backdrop of profound hardship. Official counts capture only part of the picture. Around 1.3 million people are registered as internally displaced persons in the region; but estimates suggest a hidden multitude of, perhaps, up to 70% of the displaced which bypasses formal camps altogether. Drawing on Nigeria’s deep-rooted culture of kinship networks, many seek refuge with relatives in distant urban enclaves or nearby towns and villages, straining “extended family” resources.
Many more disappear and fade entirely into invisibility in larger metropolis of Abuja or Lagos. These “invisible” displaced persons, often unregistered, miss out on aid and the counters’ numbers, their struggles masked by cultural resilience. In 2024 alone 295,000 new displacements joined the mounting dreary figures of the counted.
Meanwhile, those in camps are in the front line of calamitous realities: food insecurity that grips 33 million nationwide; inflation that has soared to 35%; the high costs of living deepening poverty. Children, comprising over half of IDPs, miss schooling, while malnutrition threatens 1.8 million young lives. In these camps, overcrowding breeds disease, and gender-based violence lurks in the shadows of makeshift shelters.
Into this fray steps the World Bank’s recent $300 million infusion for the Solutions for the Internally Displaced and Host Communities Project (SOLID). This funding, building on earlier efforts like the Multi-Sectoral Crisis Recovery Project, (MSCRP) aims to “bolster climate-resilient infrastructure, foster livelihoods, and ease tensions between IDPs and host communities”.
The World Bank claims the intervention will reach up to 7.4 million people, including 1.3 million regional IDPs, by addressing immediate needs like water access and economic cooperatives. Such support deserves genuine appreciation; it offers a lifeline in a landscape scarred by economic collapse and rising prices have left families scraping by on meagre aid.
However, this World Bank generosity falls short of the mark. The SOLID initiative, like others before it, excels in patching wounds but hesitates to heal the core affliction. It invests in making displacement bearable, upgrading camps and host areas to withstand environmental shocks and social strains. But in doing so, it risks entrenching a temporary limbo as a permanent state and thus, institutionalising displacement.
The Middle Belt’s displaced populations are not refugees fleeing across international borders; they are Nigerians forced from Nigerian soil by violence that the Nigerian state has failed to adequately address. By merely improving conditions and formalising temporary arrangements, well-intentioned projects inadvertently signal that exile might become permanent. This represents a dangerous departure from the fundamental principle that guides all displacement response: the right to return home.
For the people of the Middle Belt, attachment to ancestral lands runs deeper than economic calculation. Land is not merely property but the thread of identity and heritage. To suggest they should integrate elsewhere ignores this profound spiritual connection, measures that can feel like a polished cage. They merely provide external comforts without internal closure.
Another real peril lies in what is left unspoken; without swift returns, ancestral lands slip into the hands of land grabbers, opportunistic militias, corrupt intermediaries, or economic mineral speculators. They exploit vacated territories for grazing, mining, or illicit gains. In Benue alone, over 615,000 displacements by mid-2025 highlight how violence begets vacancy, and vacancy invites seizure.
Returning IDPs to their original homesteads is not nostalgia; it is a strategic imperative to reclaim agency and avert irreversible loss. Imagine families replanting fields in Plateau’s highlands, children resuming lessons in rebuilt schools; homecoming is the ultimate justice that will not allow the violent perpetrator to win the land as trophy.
Such returns demand a multifaceted plan: human-centred consultations to gauge readiness, logistical support for safe transport and reconstruction, financial backing for seeds and tools, political advocacy to secure titles, and ironclad security through community patrols and state partnerships. Nigeria’s history shows that kinship ties, so vital in displacement, can anchor reintegration if harnessed wisely.
The Middle Belt’s plight mirrors broader African displacement stories. Delaying returns cedes ground to those who profit from chaos, eroding Nigeria’s stability and economic potential. The World Bank’s contribution, commendable as it is, must serve as a bridge, not a barrier, to this homecoming. It can fund the groundwork: assessments, infrastructure repairs, and livelihood starters that make returns viable.
In the end, true progress lies in honouring the deepest aspiration of those displaced, which is to walk their own soil again. As Nigeria navigates other economic turmoil, prioritising these returns could transform a narrative of loss into one of gains and renewal. The land waits, but time does not. For the sake of those 3.5 million souls, and the nation’s future, the path home must be cleared, before it vanishes forever.
