56,000 IDPs in Bauchi Appeal for Govt Assistance

Segun Awofadeji in Bauchi

No fewer than 56,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Bauchi State have lamented the lack of social amenities amid allegations that both the state and federal governments relief agencies have left them to suffer.

The IDPs said the only intervention they are now receiving comes from the North East Development Commission (NEDC), pointing out that apart from the commission, no other governmental and nongovernmental agency has provided relief services to them.

Speaking on behalf of the IDPs in Turum village in Bauchi last Saturday, the state Chairman of IDPs, Musa Shehu, said they have made several entreaties to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), but alleged that they have been ignored despite several efforts to reach the authorities concerned.

The chairman said many of the IDPs in the state came from the neighboring states of Borno, Yobe, Zamfara, Taraba, Adamawa, Plateau, Katsina and Kaduna, as a result of activities of insurgents ravaging the North-east region, adding that they having been residing peacefully in the state since 2014.

According to him, “We are pleading with the federal and state governments to look into our plights by providing us with food items, social amenities, sources of livelihoods for our people as well as lands, so that we can build our own houses because many of us are living in households of host communities in the state.

“The only intervention we got from NEMA was in 2017, and since then, we have not received any support from the agency despite all efforts to contact the authorities concerned. We need schools for our children as the public schools in the state do not accept them. Most of the IDPs lost their sources of livelihoods when they left their states, now most of them do menial jobs to keep body and soul together, which cannot meet all their needs.”

Also speaking, the IDP Chairman of Misau Local Government Area, Idris Baba, called on the administration of Governor Bala Mohammed to provide IDPs in the state plots of land to build their personal houses instead of living with residents of the state.