In Niger, poorest of the poor protect refugees on the run

Yacouba Aboubacar has an unusual way to measure the welcome he received as a refugee in Niger. 

His razor blade.

It takes a certain amount of trust, after all, to let a stranger cut your hair – and a good deal more to allow him to circumcise your baby. But since Mr. Aboubacar fled here from neighboring Nigeria in December, he has found his services as a barber and circumciser constantly in demand.

Some of that work comes from other refugees, with whom he lives in a sea of white tents huddled on the edge of this small village. But much of it comes from the locals who inhabit the mud-brick houses in town. 

“I cut hair for everyone,” he says with a smile. And “if there’s a newborn, they can call me to do it.”

Mr. Aboubacar is one of some 200,000 Nigerians who have fled rising violence in recent years to seek refuge in neighboring Niger. Chadakori’s population has doubled to 16,000 since 2020 – a refugee intake on a scale almost unimaginable in the West. Yet the response from Chadakori and other villages like it has largely not been one of resentment or rejection. Instead, in one of the world’s poorest countries – beset by its own problems with violent extremism – locals have made visitors feel welcome, even when there is little to share. 

“Your guest is your god,” says Laouan Magagi, Niger’s minister of humanitarian action and catastrophe management, reciting a popular local proverb. Mr. Magagi, whose grandfather was an immigrant from Nigeria, responds with a firm “non” when asked if Niger would ever impose a cap on the number of refugees it receives. Despite conflicts in some areas of neighboring Nigeria and Mali stretching back more than a decade, “Niger is an open country,” he says. “Niger stands for humanity.”

There, but for the grace of God ...

Niger and Nigeria have long been deeply interlinked. They share a 1,000-mile border – much of it porous. Trade, languages, and culture straddle this colonial-era divide. Still, Niger is not an obvious place to host refugees, no matter how much they share in common with locals. 

At $590, Niger’s GDP per capita ranks the 10th lowest in the world. On the United Nations Human Development Index, Niger has long jostled for last place, and now it sits only above Chad and South Sudan. Meanwhile, climate change has made farming in the semiarid country even more unpredictable, and some 3 million people are expected to face hunger in the next six months, according to the nonprofit Save the Children.

But in welcoming refugees, Niger is not an outlier. About 86% of the world’s refugees live in low- and middle-income countries, and nearly 70% are in a country that neighbors the one they fled from.

“A lot of people disagreed” at first, saying “we should not accept them,” says Achirour Arzika, Chadakori’s traditional chief, recalling the day three years ago when a government delegation came to ask the residents if refugees could be resettled here. But he held firm, and others soon warmed to the idea. “It could happen to us also,” he says. “So we agreed, and we gave a place where we could host them.” 

Besides, he adds matter-of-factly, “this is ... international law,” referencing Niger’s adherence to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention.

Conflict between armed groups and the military have also displaced more than 350,000 Nigeriens, especially as armed jihadist groups spill over from Mali and Burkina Faso to the west, and Boko Haram strikes around Lake Chad to the east. But much of the country is relatively calm compared to its neighbors. 

Robbed at gunpoint

In northwest Nigeria, where Mr. Aboubacar is from, criminal groups stage regular armed robberies and kidnappings. It’s a campaign of terror born of poverty, joblessness, poor governance, and fights over the region’s dwindling land. 

One evening last December, he was sitting outside with friends drinking tea in his village in Sokoto state, near Nigeria’s northern border, when a group of armed men on motorcycles roared to a stop in front of him. They barked a question: Was this Nigeria or Niger? 

When Mr. Aboubacar told them they were in Nigeria, the bandits announced they were going to rob the men and proceeded to raid their homes and take their livestock. But in a sense, it was a reprieve. If they had been in Niger, the bandits said they would have killed them in retribution for how Niger’s military often deals with the Nigerian militants who roam the borderlands. 

After the attack, Mr. Aboubacar and the rest of his village fled north, over the border. He soon found himself in Chadakori, where “we were really received well,” he says. 

Integration isn’t always so smooth. Different official languages – French in Niger, English in Nigeria – are used in government as well as education. Refugee students must now make the switch to French, and government forms need translation.

“It’s a very welcoming country. ... It’s just that the resources are very limited,” says Ilaria Manunza, Niger country director for Save the Children, which runs child protection and other youth services in the country’s refugee camps. And the population of refugees, she notes, is constantly in flux. “They tend to go back when the situation is a little bit calmer, and they flee [again] when attacks increase.”

The better dancers?

And, despite Niger’s generosity, most refugees remain poor. In camps set up by the United Nations, families cram into tentlike temporary housing with dirt floors. World Food Program cash stipends sometimes arrive late and have recently been reduced by more than a third. Many are forced to beg in nearby towns. Some locals – even those who support welcoming refugees – complain about sporadic criminal incidents or refugees defaulting on loans. And for every village that has stepped up to host refugees, others have turned them away.  

Four years ago, Anas Habibou led a group of about 350 Nigerian refugees trekking through Niger, seeking somewhere to settle. Some villages offered help, but “many villages refused,” says Mr. Habibou. Today, he is the traditional chief for 5,500 Nigerian refugees who have settled next to the town of Dan Daji Makaou, 22 miles away from Chadakori, where they outnumber the local population by a factor of four or five. “We are safe here,” he says. “Even before NGOs brought anything, the head of the village and his people contributed personally.”

Yacouba Saidou, a prominent Dan Dadji Makaou elder, says that other village leaders in the region warned him that trouble stalked refugees. They told him that the violence that caused Nigerians to flee could strike next on their doorstep. But his town’s experience, he says, has been the opposite. Refugees have been a boon to the local economy, working as farm laborers and brick makers, and spending their earnings in local markets. “It has turned into something beneficial to us,” he says.

In Chadakori, where 19 marriages have quite literally bound the refugee and local populations together, Abou Amadou brags that he was the first Nigerien in his town to marry a Nigerian. 

“After me, five of my friends got married” to refugees, says Mr. Amadou, who, in line with local polygamous customs, recently got married again – to another Nigerian woman. 

Still, differences between the two communities remain – at least according to some. Having hosted two weddings that mixed Nigerien and Nigerian customs, Mr. Amadou says proudly, “Nigeriens are better dancers.”