The Borno State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) has appealed to the United Nations to intercede in the emerging humanitarian crisis the Boko Haram insurgency has brought in West and Central Africa.
The Chairman of the organisation, Alhaji Grema Terab, said the Boko Haram crisis was assuming “different dangerous dimension” by the day as shown by the recent extradition of about 15 000 locals from Niger. “Today it is Niger that is sending Nigerians parking, tomorrow it may be Chad or Cameroon or any other country in the sub region,” Terab said
He added that the situation call for urgent attention first from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), then the African Union and perhaps the United Nations.
Terab said Borno State alone have borne the brunt of building a new camp for 4 248 indigenes of the state evacuated to Maiduguri.
He lamented that with the creation of the new camp for those evacuated from Niger, the state has 21 camps with over 120 000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), insisting that this had created a heavy financial burden on the state government with several millions of Naira going into the running of the camps.
“As it stands today Borno state government has expended several billions of Naira on the problems thrown at it by the Boko Haram crisis and this has put at a standstill so many other things. We need the assistance of not only the federal government but the United Nations to come out of this quagmire which has put everything in the state at a near standstill.”
Terab added, “It was a pity that the state who have had to bear the burden of 1,5 million internally displaced persons overdrawing the facilities in Maiduguri, has to do it almost alone without appreciable assistance coming from the Nigerian government and international agencies.”
The Boko Haram terror has claimed the lives of more than 13 000 people and displaced about 2 million over the years.
Credit: CAJ News
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