Thousands of residents of Jakana village of Konduga Local Government Area on Borno State, on Saturday protested lack of drinking water.
To drive home their grouse, the protesters, mainly youths, blocked the convoy of Governor Kashim Shettima en route Beneshiek to inspect ongoing work on houses destroyed by insurgents.
The youths explained that their action was because of the deplorable situation, which had forced them to trek for kilometres to buy water at the cost of N100 per keg of 25litres, compared to residents in Maiduguri who buy same at only N5.
Mallam Abubakar Yakubu who participated in the protest told Sunday Vanguard that due to the lingering crisis of Boko Haram, many residents of Jakana, in most cases, could not buy even a one litre of water on daily basis, and, therefore, resorted to drinking conterminated water from streams and dams which is also used by animals.
“We have been suffering from lack of water, and everybody knows that water is life; during the Boko Haram attacks on this community, all our functional boreholes were vandalized by the insurgents.
”As I am talking to you, government has failed to come to our aid by repairing the boreholes in this area; we are pleading that Shettima should drill more boreholes and repair the damaged ones,” Yakubu stated.
Shettima, who heeded the demand by the aggrieved residents to come out and speak, promised that government through the ministry of water resources will soon embark on drilling of more boreholes in the village and repair the existing ones.
He said, already his government had started rebuilding all the destroyed communities to enable the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) go back home and continue their normal lives.
Shettima further appealed to them to be patient as his administration and the security agencies were doing everything possible to ensure adequate protection of lives and property and as well restore peace.
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