The International Organization for Migration (IOM), has lamented over its recent assessment which shows that more than 700,000 people were internally displaced across the seven states in the northwest region.

Chief of Mission, IMO Nigeria, Sharon Dimanche made this known Friday afternoon at a press conference and media parley held virtually at the organisation’s branch office in Katsina State

Dimanche said of the over 700,000, almost 620,000 or 84 percent, were displaced by armed banditry and kidnapping, with Katsina having about 181,000 displaced persons, and neighboring Zamfara having over 261,000 persons.

She said between January 2035 and January 2026, reported incidents displaced more than 138,000 people in Katsina alone, with almost 72,000 of those displacements followed floods, heavy rainfall or windstorms.

She added that almost 60,000 displaced persons were linked to armed banditry and kidnapping within the same period, even as almost 147,000 returnees were assessed across the northwest, including more than 37,000 in Katsina.

Dimanche, however, said that another recent assement showed a decline in number of displaced persons by about five percent, with almost similar percent increase in number of those returning to their homes and communities across the region.

She said a return is not automatically a durable solution as “people need to return to places where they are safe, where they can earn a living, where their children can go to school, and where the conditions that displaced them in the first place have been addressed.

“And this is where peace building and early warning become really very, very important. Conflict rarely happens without warning signs. The question is whether we recognize those signs early enough, and whether information reaches the right people quickly enough, and whether communities and authorities can act before tensions become violence and violence becomes displacement.

“When early warning works, the results may never make the news. A dispute is resolved and a farmer remains on his land, and children remain in school, and a family does not have to flee. That is peace building in very practical terms.”

She said it was against this background that the IOM is working in the region by implementing the European Union-funded Conflict Prevention, Crisis Response and Resilience (CPCRR) Project in Katsina and Zamfara States.

According to her, the partnership allows IOM to work on the consequences of instability, strengthen peace building, strengthen early warning, and community resilience, help communities identify risks and acts before they become crises.

“This program, the partnership, is really intended to address those issues before they occur and lead to more displacement,” she added.