Return Displaced Persons to Ancestral Homes, ASUU Tells FG

• Donates relief materials to 320 Katsina IDPs

Francis Sardauna in Katsina

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has called on the Federal Government to ensure the return of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to their ancestral homes.

The National President of the union, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, made the appeal while donating relief materials to 320 IDPs in Katsina, the Katsina State capital on Sunday.

The assorted food items donated to the displaced persons residing at Gidan Dawa and Babbar Ruga communities in Katsina metropolis, were rice, beans, spaghetti, vegetable oil, maggi and salt.

Represented by the ASUU National Resource Person, Dr. Lawali Alkali-Argungu, Osodeke said the Federal Government should secure communities in the state and across the country to enable the displaced persons return to their ancestral homes.

Describing the spate of displaced persons in Nigeria as the principal manifestation of the country’s leadership failure, the ASUU president admonished President Bola Tinubu to ensure the return of the IDPs to their homes.

He said: “ASUU sees IDPs as a principal manifestation of the serious problem of leadership in this country. We envisaged that during the last administration, the IDPs would go back to their homes because the president of the country was a retired military Major General. 

“If IDPs cannot go when a retired senior military officer is in charge, then where is our hope? But we are still appealing to the present government under the watch of President Tinubu to return these IDPs to their original homes so that they can farm.”

The ASUU national president, however, appreciated the commitment of Governor Dikko Umaru Radda in tackling banditry and other security challenges bedevilling communities in the state.

According to him, “We pray he (Radda) should remain focused and do whatever the government can do to  ensure that these IDPs go back to their ancestral homes.”