Nigeria is risking the lives of millions of displaced
civilians by planning to return them to communities
vulnerable to attack by Islamist terrorists, experts warn.
The government says it has all but defeated Boko Haram,
the ISIS-allied group that was involved in the slaughter
of 11,000 people last year and ranks among the world's
deadliest terror organizations .
President Muhammadu Buhari has pledged that he will
"start in earnest" to return an estimated 2.2 million
citizens who have been forced to flee their homes.
However, while most of the territory once held by Boko
Haram has been recaptured, experts say the insurgents'
renewed guerrilla campaign is deadlier than ever.
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 FROM DEC. 23:
Thousands Flee to Safety After Boko Haram Attacks
Along Nigerian Border 1:06
"The concern from humanitarian actors is that some of
these areas are still very risky for people to live in,"
Francis Garriba of the United Nations Refugee Agency
(UNHCR) told NBC News from the Nigerian capital of
Abuja. "To return the IDPs [internally displaced people]
to their home communities is premature in many cases."
Garriba said he believed the government was putting
millions of lives at risk with its plan.
"If the government wants to remake a meaningful life for
these people it will take a very long time to put these
infrastructures in place," he said.
Nigeria says around 80 percent of its IDPs are women or
children. Most are staying in relatives' homes, but
thousands are forced to live in camps funded by the
government and aid agencies.
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"MASS RETURNS COULD BE LIKE RED
RAGS TO A BULL"
Their towns and villages were heavily damaged or
destroyed as Boko Haram swept the northeast of the
country in 2014.
"They killed two of my brothers," 39-year-old
Mohammed Umaru, a nurse who fled the northeast to a
camp outside Abuja, told NBC News.
With little or no infrastructure, civilians wanting to move
back there would face a lack of food, water, medicine
and education, as well as the militant threat.
There is also evidence that Boko Haram suicide bombers
have deliberately attacked returning IDPs because of
their vulnerability, according to Elizabeth Pearson, an
associate fellow at London's Royal United Services
Institute think tank.
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"Mass returns could be like red rags to a bull," Pearson
said. "While IDPs want to return home, and should
eventually do so, it is important to ensure that their
safety is not jeopardized in achieving this goal."
Manzo Ezekiel, spokesman for Nigeria's National
Emergency Management Agency, rejected the idea that
some areas were not safe enough for re-population.
"The military has made a lot of progress against Boko
Haram ... and the IDPs are very much eager to go back
to their communities," he told NBC News. "The fear that
was in the minds of the people last year is not the same
kind of fear that's in their minds now."
However, Ezekiel was not able to provide details on
whether the government planed to finance the rebuilding
of ruined communities, nor how 2.2 million people would
be transported across the country.
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One of the IDPs who is feeling more positive is Bunu
Saje, a 55-year-old civil servant who was forced to flee
his hometown of Baga after a devastating Boko Haram
assault in January last year .
"Yes, yes, yes! Of course we want to return. Life here is
not comfortable," he told NBC News by telephone from
Maiduguri. "The security situation has now improved.
The threat has dramatically decreased."
Related: ISIS Owns Headlines, but Nigeria's Boko Haram
Kills More Than Ever
Evidence suggests that this optimism owes more to
government hype than reality.
The administration has been keen to appear successful
against Boko Haram after the crisis became deeply
embarrassing for the previous government.
The potential for political points scoring could be
prompting "the incumbent administration to try to paint
a better picture that's not representative of the situation
on the ground," said Ryan Cummings, a South Africa-
based analyst at crisis management consultancy Red24 .
"You just cannot see how communities within northeast
Nigeria are going to be repopulated without protection
against very probable attacks," he added.
 FROM MARCH 8,
2015: Militant group Boko Haram pledges allegiance to
ISIS 0:33
The UNHCR's Garriba agreed, calling the government's
positive message "political propaganda."
One man who as seen the crisis unfold firsthand is
Zanna Mustapha, a lawyer and philanthropist who runs a
school for orphans and disadvantaged children in
Maiduguri.
The northeastern city has remained a relative safe haven
despite being on the fringes of the conflict, and as such
has seen a large influx of IDPs.
"It's not safe for anybody to go back to where they have
come from," Mustapha said. "Every week there are fresh
attacks."
He praised the efforts of the Nigerian army in routing
Boko Haram from its territory, but said he was worried
there were too many unanswered questions in the
government's plan to resettle people.
"How do you transport them back to their communities?
How do you take care of their town? Is the military going
to be guarding them 24 hours a day?" he said.
The arrival of untold numbers of IDPs has put a strain on
the city, Mustapha said, with his school, the Future
Prowess Islamic Foundation, also seeing a swell in
numbers.
"We have orphans whose fathers were soldiers in the
Nigerian army, and orphans whose fathers were Boko
Haram fighters — they are all children who need
somewhere to go," he said. "Most of the children in the
school witnessed how their parents were killed and saw
the most horrible things you can imagine."
Outside of Maiduguri "the humanitarian challenge is also
enormous," said Nwakpa Nwakpa, head of
communications at the Nigerian Red Cross Society.
Some civilians want to return to their hometowns,
Nwakpa said, while others see little point in moving from
one area of poverty to another.
"For some of them, moving back would be just like
moving from one IDP camp to another — there's nothing
there for them anymore in a lot of cases," he said.