President Bola Tinubu’s government has ordered the International NGO Safety Organisation (INSO), a non-governmental organisation that provides support for humanitarian services, to close down its services and leave the country immediately.

“Today, INSO received a formal request from Nigerian authorities to suspend its humanitarian activities in the country,” said INSO country director Nigeria, Zeljko Toncic, in a statement obtained by Peoples Gazette on Saturday. “In strict compliance with this decision, INSO is immediately suspending all of its services to humanitarian partners in Nigeria.”

Mr Toncic, however, said the organisation is ready to engage with the Nigerian authorities in order to provide a space for dialogue. 

INSO started its humanitarian services in Nigeria in 2016 and has since supported quite a number of non-governmental organisations with humanitarian aid across the country.

The order of suspension from the Nigerian government has been tied to the organisation’s alleged suspicious operations, as several people in the humanitarian sector observed that Tinubu-led government was poised to use the organisation’s USAID Boko Haram link allegation as a tool to clamp on operations of humanitarian organisations in the country.

Amid accusations that some NGOs fuelled insecurity in the country, several people in the sector also expressed concerns that the government would issue more close-down orders which would significantly affect millions of victims who serially benefit from humanitarian interventions in the country.

In March, the government made attempts to investigate NGOs after U.S. Congressman Scott Perry alleged that USAID funding were inadvertently used to support Boko Haram activities especially in the North-East. However, the investigation suffered pushback from NGOs which described it as needless intrusion and infringement on their rights.

Meanwhile, Zamfara government in 2023 ordered all NGOs to exit the state, accusing them of fueling insecurity with their illegal activities and non-registration with the government.

Some years back, Governor Babagana Zulum also banned non-governmental organisations from distributing food relief to resettled internally displaced persons in five local government areas of Borno state.

Prior to this suspension, INSO had discontinued most of its in-person training services in several countries, including all Hostile Environment Individual Safety Training (HEIST) and Hostile Environment & First Aid Training (HEFAT), after U.S. suspended USAID funding which contributed approximately 37% of the organisation’s global budget.