Prereturn Assessment of Socioeconomic and Infrastructure Needs and Provision: Do they Guarantee Willingness to Return among Displaced Persons in Nigeria?

Paul Adekola, University of Medical Sciences, Ondo City, Nigeria

Peace slowly returned to North-East Nigeria after a decade of insurgency activities by Boko Haram. The Nigerian Government asked the conflict-induced internally displaced persons (CIDPs) to return home and promised a sustainable return by providing for their socioeconomic needs. This paper attempts a prereturn assessment of the socioeconomic and infrastructure needs, ranked in order of priority, which may induce willingness for a voluntary return among them. The paper uses survey data collected via a questionnaire from 866 CIDPs at eight systematically selected camps in North-East Nigeria. Results show that they consider financial assistance (89.4%), reopening of commercial centres (87%), assurance of human security (85%) and reopening of damaged medical facilities (83.1%) as the needs that are of the highest priority to their return. Furthermore, logistic regression shows that those who view job opportunities as a high priority are 14.11 times more likely to be willing to return than those who do not see it as a priority (OR= 14.11; P< 0.05). The adjusted model summary shows that the selected socioeconomic needs explained a 37.6% change in their willingness to return home (log-likelihood ratio [LLR] =717.360, R2 = 37.6%, p-value= 0.000). Appropriate recommendations were made to the government and other relevant stakeholders.

Keywords: Migrant Populations and Refugees, Population and Development, Population Policies, Internal Migration and Urbanization

See paper.