President to meet needs of 2m IDPs with new programmes

President

This is contained in a statement issued in Abuja on Monday by the president’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr Femi Adesina.

Adesina said the president gave the assurance at the High-Level Summit on “Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants” on the margins of the 71st Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, United States.

President Buhari said that such intervention programmes include: the Presidential Intervention Committee on Rehabilitation of the North-East and the Victims Support Fund.

Others, according to him, are the Safe Schools Initiative and the proposed North-East Development Commission currently undergoing legislative process.

“We are making concerted efforts to meet our citizens’ immediate humanitarian needs by reducing their risk and vulnerability and increasing their resilience through vocational training and skills acquisition programmes, particularly for IDPs in camp’’.

According to him, any discourse on refugees and migrants in Nigeria, must refer to the internally displaced persons, victims of Boko Haram’s atrocities.

The president said the atrocities had also rendered 600,000 persons homeless in Nigeria’s neighbouring countries.

Buhari noted that in order to find a lasting solution to this regional challenge, Nigeria in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, recently hosted a regional conference on displacement of persons within the framework of Regional Protection Dialogue on the Lake Chad Basin.

At the global level, President Buhari said Nigeria had equally shown appreciable concern on issues of global human mobility, using such control instruments as the National Migration Policy; Labour Migration Policy; Trafficking in Persons Prohibition Laws, and Nigeria Immigration and National Drug Law Enforcement Acts.

The Nigerian leader condemned all new forms of racism, xenophobia and hate ideology targeted at “undermining the considerable benefits that migration can deliver to global efficiency.”

Buhari noted that such divisive tendencies only lead to violence and avoidable loss of lives in a world that requires cooperation.

According to him, globalisation should mean free movement of goods, services and people.

“Nigeria believes that without deliberate and collective commitment and action, the issue of large movement of refugees and migrants may impede our aspirations toward achieving the Programme of Action of the Cairo Agenda +20 and global determination to leave no one behind in the implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” he said.