Presidential Committee North-East explains why IDPs will remain in camps

Presidential Committee on the North-East Initiative (PCNI) says Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) will remain in camps until their communities are safe enough for them to resume their livelihood activities including farming.

Alhaji Tijjani Tumsah, the Vice Chairman of the PCNI said this at the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) Forum held on Sunday in Abuja.

He said that they would allow people to return back to their communities only when it has been certified safe for return by security agencies and the State government.

“They have made efforts to construct building and restore homes of those people that have been displaced earlier on.

“And they can only return when all those places are safe, the number of people returning to their communities is of course increasing, as we have more military successes, people now move back to their homes.

“ We have to now continuously prepare, to make sure that once they get back home, they are safe and they can resume their livelihood, most of the people there are farmers and farming resumption requires that you are safe.

“When you go to the farm, a lot of these areas are still not safe for that to happen, so therefore, they continue to stay in camps."

Tumsah said that the number of people returning to their communities was increasing in the areas where the military had recorded successes.

He said that the committee was considering an alternative solution to create a new resettlement in the areas that are secured as the way forward.

According to him, the delivery of items to IDPs camps is quite appreciable in spite the issue of some diversion from officials.

He said that delivery of goods and services was easier for the committee with those in the camps than people living amongst the host community.

The vice chairman, however, said that people in the IDPs camps were easy to reach, unlike the people that are not under the care in the camps.

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Tumsah further said that insurgency issue and displacement is a dynamic one and a community can only be certify safe by the military.

He said that the committee was a civilian component of the military that can only work and give interventions in the areas that are secured.

“The PCNI by my estimation is the civilian component of military successes, so what happens is that Boko Haram menace has been degraded to an extent that it is only few that are doing those act of terrorism.

“ Isolated attacks that make it harder for intervention to happen as you will want, the committee is working in areas that are secured, that has been certified secured by the military.

“Part of the government strategies is strictly the military affair, we engage in areas that are deem to be secured and ready for intervention,“ he said.