Impact of Insurgency on Socio-Economic Activities of Michika, Adamawa State, Nigeria

Abstract

Insurgency is the organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region. This research is aimed at assessing the impact of insurgency on the socio-economic activities of the population of Michika and environs. Simple random sampling technique was adopted in administering 399 questionnaires to 34,451 households with the recovery of only 150 questionnaires owing to the sensitive nature of the study area, inverse probability weighting was used to adjust for the response biasness through assigning weights to the 150 responding households based on their probability of responding using logistic regression. However, focus group discussion was carried out among residents in the local government secretariat, Wummu, Yelchim, Adult-Male/Female returnees from the Internally Displaced Persons camp (IDP), also direct observations of the destroyed facilities were made. Their revelation further complimented the data gathered from the field through questionnaire administration. Findings from the field revealed high tendency of insecurity in the study area despite security measures by various institutions with about 142 persons drawn from the category of the host (72) and displaced (70) family members, losing their jobs as a result of insurgency in the study area while 83% have lost major assets and business efforts among the hosts at 71 and 54 of displaced residents respectively with income drastically reduced at 82% among the entire residents. However, revelations from the focus group discussion revealed that major facilities such as schools, markets, hospital and telecommunication facilities
were either affected or destroyed by bombs during the course of the attacks. Therefore, the paper recommends the need to intensify measures targeted at re-integrating the people back to their homes as well as building formidable renewal programmes to combat insurgency in Michika and Nigeria at large.