Nigeria

I represent communities in Logo Local Government Area in Benue State, northcentral Nigeria, with a focus on people living at the Ugba Health Centre and Anyiin Health Centre camps for internally displaced persons. I want to help preserve their accounts of home, displacement, and the daily work of living with uncertainty.

Families in these communities have been forced from their ancestral homes by violence. Women and children are among those particularly affected. Away from home, people face shortages of basic resources while coping with the distress of displacement. Yet their experiences are too often recorded only as numbers, leaving little room for how individuals describe what they have lost, what they remember, and what they need.

Through this chapter, I hope to listen to the experiences people choose to share. Alongside accounts of leaving home and finding shelter, I am interested in the lives that came before displacement: family histories, livelihoods, community relationships, and the places people remember. These details matter because displacement is one part of a person’s history, not the entirety of it.

The chapter will also explore how people manage everyday life away from home. How do families care for one another when resources are scarce? What knowledge and practices do they carry with them? What do they want others to understand about their present circumstances and their hopes for the future? These questions will guide conversations while leaving space for contributors to identify what matters most to them.

By contributing these accounts to the Global Narrative Initiative, I hope to make them available to readers beyond the camps and preserve them for future generations. Contributors should have a say in how their experiences are represented and shared. The aim is to build a record in which people can recognize their own lives, words, and priorities.

–Joesph Eneji

Joseph Eneji

Chapter Leader

Joseph Eneji is a faculty member at Pan-Atlantic University in Lagos, where he teaches Nigerian Peoples and Culture to undergraduate students. He is also a PhD student in History and Strategic Studies at the University of Lagos. He earned his master’s degree in the same field with distinction, specializing in social history, and holds a bachelor’s degree in History and International Studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

His research interests include African historiography, mission historiography in Africa, Pentecostalism in sub-Saharan Africa, Pan-Africanism, Nigerian history and culture, global studies, and decoloniality. He has published journal articles and contributed chapters to edited volumes.