Closed clinic leaves Benue IDPs facing costly, fragmented healthcare
A clinic that once provided basic healthcare to displaced residents at NKST Primary School in Anyiin, Logo Local Government Area of Benue State, is no longer functioning, leaving families to seek treatment outside the settlement and shoulder additional costs.
A Premium Times investigation found the facility locked and deserted, with no health workers or patients present.
Residents said the loss of on-site care has made treatment particularly difficult for families already living with displacement, unstable income and transport costs.
Humanitarian support ended, clinic closed
According to former workers interviewed in the investigation, Médecins Sans Frontières established the clinic as displacement intensified in the area.
Victim Support Fund later supported the facility, but that assistance reportedly ended in January 2021.
Former staff linked the eventual closure to the loss of funding, personnel and medical supplies.
The sequence highlights a wider service-delivery problem: healthcare may function while humanitarian organisations provide resources, then weaken when that support ends and government systems do not fully replace it.
Residents bear the cost
Pregnant women, children and older residents were among those described as especially affected.
Some families said they now rely on patent medicine shops, traditional remedies or health facilities outside the camp when they can afford them.
One grandmother described taking her eight-month-old granddaughter for outside treatment after the child became seriously ill. She said a blood transfusion was recommended but unaffordable, and the child later died.
She believes access to the former camp clinic might have changed the outcome.
That account illustrates the consequences of limited access, but it does not establish that closure of the clinic medically caused the child’s death.
Questions over maternal care
The investigation also recorded complaints from pregnant women about charges for medicines during antenatal visits outside the camp.
Those allegations remain unresolved and should not be treated as established findings where the relevant health facility has not provided a substantive response.
What is clearer is that the disappearance of on-site care has transferred more cost and logistical pressure to displaced families.
State support exists — but access remains the test
Benue State Emergency Management Agency says it provides medical support to displaced and vulnerable residents through treatment and referral programmes.
Its online directory also lists an “Anyiin HC IDP Camp” in Logo LGA as having medical services.
IDNN has not established that the SEMA-listed Anyiin HC IDP Camp is the same site as the closed NKST Primary School clinic.
That distinction matters.
A government database showing medical services somewhere in Anyiin does not by itself establish that residents at the closed NKST site have routine, affordable access to primary healthcare.
A wider displacement burden
Benue carries one of the largest displacement burdens in north-central Nigeria, increasing pressure on health facilities serving both displaced people and host communities.
The central accountability question is therefore not whether any government or humanitarian healthcare exists.
It is whether the support available is reliable, affordable and close enough to replace the primary care residents lost when the camp clinic closed.
What authorities need to answer
The immediate questions are practical:
Who is responsible for providing routine primary care at the NKST Primary School displacement site?
Are health workers currently assigned to the affected population?
What medicines and maternal-health services are available without charge?
And if residents are expected to use another facility, how accessible is it to families who may not be able to afford transport or treatment?
The original investigation reported that Benue SEMA and the state health commissioner had not responded to its requests for comment by publication time.
IDNN should not describe that as an independent contact attempt unless the newsroom separately seeks comment.
Until those questions are resolved, the closed clinic represents the gap between healthcare existing somewhere in the system and displaced families being able to reach it when they need treatment.