Biography of Gaji - our Nigeria partner
by Julia Magaud
Gaji* is 28 years old and is Kanuri by tribe. He was born and raised in the Maiduguri, the capital city of Borno State in Northern Nigeria.
Borno State has been terrorized for over a decade by Boko Haram, an Islamic extremist group, and by a breakaway faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province. These two groups instigated violence and chaos throughout the region, leaving thousands dead and tens of thousands displaced.
Before the Boko Haram attacks began in 2009, Maidiguri was a peaceful part of Nigeria. Seeing the attacks escalate, Gaji chose to leave Maidiguri and moved to Kaduna State for three years. As the attacks gradually decreased between 2012 and 2014, Gaji decided to return to his hometown.
Nevertheless, just about everyone living in Maidiguri has been affected by the terrorist group, in one way or the other. As a school teacher, Gaji says he was frightened when the terrorists began targeting teachers and “those answerable to the Western World” such as college students or government workers.
Some were indirectly threatened by the terrorist activities because they threated Nigeria’s economic growth. Many lost their businesses and the poverty rate increased. The National Bureau of Statistics reports 40.1% of the total population are classified as poor and 82 million live on less than $1 a day.
Today, Gaji considers himself a secular humanist but he prefers to keep these beliefs to himself for safety reasons. Gaji has been working with Humanist Global Charity and implementing projects in the Al-Amin internally displaced persons (IDP) Camp or the past 3 years.
This refugee camp is one of the smallest camps in the city, regrouping around 200 households, mostly women and children. It was established as a result of 2019 terrorist attacks on Marte, a village slightly over 100km northeast from Maiduguri. The majority of the refugees in the Maidiguri camp are farmers from the village. Unable to practice their profession, they solely rely on aid from international and local NGOs to feed their families.
In June 2020, HGC partnered with Gaji to launch the World Peace Internet Café in Maiduguri, which is getting an increasing number of customers, notably students, from within the community but also neighboring communities. The Internet Café has already been greatly beneficial to the community since many had never had access to internet service or had to travel long distances in order to get it.
Moreover, the World Peace Internet Café makes service 50% off for women every Wednesday and offers free computer classes for the poor twice a week. These classes now have 8 participants. Furthermore, the profits from the café are also used to assist refugees with food, clothing, blankets, tarpaulins, mosquito nets, latrines, water barrels, and startup funds like a Noodle Factory.
Many of the projects HGC has funded in the Al-Amin IDP camp such as the production of noodles, for example, have strived to empower refugee women.
In fact, this is just what Gaji and HGC’s new project, the HGC Ice Cream Factory, will aim to do by hiring four refugee women (Amina Mustafa, Sitiya Atiku, Rimannam Ali and Fanna Bulama) to run the ice-cream machines. The HGC Ice Cream Factory will produce 43 liters of vanilla, strawberry and banana ice-cream (equivalent to 288 containers), which will be sold for $24. Potential profits should be of $9 per day, and $270 per month.
With just $25, you can make a significant difference in the lives of these refugee women, their families and the rest of their community, as their lives and livelihoods continue to be threatened by Boko Haram’s terrorist activities.
* Gaji is an alias
UPDATE: On 10 June, 2020, the Associated Press reports Boko Haram, a terrorist group supported by ISIS, had killed at least 81 people, wounded many and abducted at least 7 in the Foduma Kolomaiya in northeast Nigeria, nearly 100 km northwest of Maiduguri.