This incisive and provocative blog calls attention to the failure of IDP governance and humanitarian systems in Nigeria to adjust to the urbanisation of displacement. Drawing on a ten-city interdisciplinary research project conducted over a seven-year period, the article argues that despite the highly visible shift toward IDP self-settlement in urban centres, established IDP protection systems and actors blindly cling to decreasingly relevant paradigms that prioritise conflict zones and IDP camps. This has left the growing number of urban IDPs in Nigeria without adequate rights protections and structurally excluded from urban services and institutions, even as their presence profoundly reshapes urban spaces.

The author argues that IDP rights protections and the provision of lasting solutions must be embedded within mainstream systems of urban governance. Government and humanitarian actors need to move beyond treating internal displacement as an exceptional but temporary humanitarian emergency and, instead, recognise urban IDPs as long-term residents whose inclusion is essential to equitable and sustainable urban and national development.