The Director-General of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Mr Muhammed Sidi, has disclosed that only six out of the 275 females rescued from the Sambisa Forest in Borno State are pregnant.
Sidi made this disclosure while speaking at an interactive forum organised by a non-governmental organisation, 1 Nigeria Initiative, in Abuja on Sunday.
He noted that the claim that most of them came out with pregnancy was untrue.
“I must put it on record that only six of them came with pregnancy and we must be very careful not to stigmatise these innocent Nigerians.
“This is necessary so that we do not end up stigmatising the child that is yet unborn. I think we must respect their rights”, Sidi advised.
He said that 70 per cent of the rescued females were children below five, while 63 of them could not identify their relatives.
“It is a terrible situation to have children under five unaccompanied, meaning that they have lost their parents and we cannot link them with their parents at the moment”, he said.
He said that there were six camps, otherwise known as “residential camps” in Yola, Adamawa State holding 27,000 internally-displaced persons while another 200,000 were living in communities.
He said the agency had 14 camps at the beginning of 2014 in Adamawa alone.
“But most communities under the occupation of Boko Haram have been recovered and peace has returned, so the displaced persons are beginning to move back to their various communities”, Sidi said.
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