The Borno state government, Friday, ordered council chairmen to relocate and open offices at the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps in Maiduguri the state capital, along with their Divisional Police Officers (DPO) to ensure security and adequate food supply for the over 1.5 million displaced persons in the State.
This follows Thursday protest by hundreds IDPs from Marte Local Government Area who took to the streets of Maiduguri, alleging shortage of food and water.
The Commissioner for Local Government and Emirate Affairs, Alhaji Usman Zannah on Friday at the Musa Usman secretariat complex, Maiduguri, summoned Caretaker Chairmen of Marte, Mafa, Dikwa, Bama, Mobbar, Abadam, Monguno, Gwoza among other council areas where he addressed them on the need to relocate the displaced persons in Maiduguri camps to liberated communities, while those inaccessible council areas like Abadam, Mobbar, Gwoza and Marte should ensure that they have their offices at camps in Maiduguri to immediately address issues of hunger and food shortages.
He said that Thursday’s protests of IDPs over poor feeding, was caused by inadequate supply of food items from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), which according to him, it has been observed in the last three months that NEMA has failed to live up to its expectation of providing food items to IDPs in Borno, despite Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed which stipulates that the State Government provides condiments, while NEMA provides food items to IDPs.
His words: “For those council chairmen that are maintaining IDPs’ camps here in Maiduguri, while your areas are inaccessible, you are to immediately relocate to your respective camps in the metropolis and listen to displaced persons’ problems.
“Where there are problems, you run down to us, so that government can render all assistance, including the supply and distribution of food items on family or household basis.”
Zannah, however, noted that during the last one month, the Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs has spent over N20 million on the procurement of firewood for cooking to IDPs.
He said that there were a lot of allegations and counter allegations that the cooks in camps do not cook food, despite the supply of firewood.
”Consequently, to address some of these problems in camps, the state government and other donor agencies like International Community for Red Cross (ICRC) decided to start feeding IDPs on the family or household basis, instead of central cooking in camps that had caused a lot of problems instigated by enemies of government,” he said.
“This system was adopted and has worked well. We also learnt that some of the displaced persons hide food items and sell them.”
He, therefore, urged the summoned council chairmen to judiciously use government resources at their disposal in order to tackle the needs of IDPs.
“Security is to be beefed up and maintained so that these ugly things in camps do not happen again,” tasked Zannah.
He also ordered that Konduga and Mafa councils’ IDPs taking refuge in Maiduguri are to relocate to their communities with immediate effect, while in due course, 70, 000 Dikwa IDPs, are to relocate from the camp to their respective houses or residences in Dikwa border town, including the ones from Bama campwho are to move to Banki border town with Cameroon.
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