Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has announced a resettlement program for internally displaced people in the country's northeast following a 13-year conflict with Islamic extremists. We have officially opened the facility.
Buhari's visit to Borno State, the epicenter of Nigeria's Islamist insurgency, on Thursday was part of activities to mark World Humanitarian Day declared by the United Nations.
Bukhari has commissioned his 500 new resettlement homes in the local Moray village. The president also donated food items such as rice, beans and cooking oil to thousands of internally displaced persons.
Nigerian authorities also announced cash transfers to more than 5,000 beneficiaries. Most of them are women and people with disabilities.
Since last year, authorities have stepped up efforts to close his IDP camps in the state and resettle residents back to their villages and towns.
To date, he has completed more than 6,000 homes and assigned them to beneficiaries, according to local media.
However, aid groups have expressed concerns about the safety of internally displaced persons. Abha Aliyari Lima, co-founder of the Green Panthers Foundation, a nonprofit focused on mitigating the impacts of climate change, told his VOA by phone from Maiduguri.
"Relocated people still complain about their access to basic services such as water and health care," Yarima said. “Then we still have a lot of safety issues, but the Northwest also has a bit of a security concern right now, so it's overshadowing the Northeast ones. There is a shocking story unseen in the story.”
Buhari praised the Nigerian military, saying their efforts had made great strides toward the elimination of terrorists. 21}
Security analyst Senator Iroegb agreed, but said authorities must remain vigilant.Internally displaced persons are being resettled. There is relative progress and stability in the northeast [but] the military is unable to effectively police," Iroegbu said. Liberation does not mean that it is safe for civilians to relocate. There, other security agencies intervene, so I don't know if the federal government takes that into account.
The United Nations estimates that more than 37,000 people have died and about 2.8 million have been displaced from their homes.
The war has spread to other parts of the country and to neighboring Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
Yarima said attacks continued in the northeast.
"There are as many attacks in the northeast as there are in the northwest." The media is in the northwest," Yarima said. “This has also made it clear that many interventions that are supposed to be in the northeast are going to the northwest. , Cameroonian combined forces killed over 100 of him. A bar in the Islamic State of West Africa containing 10 commanders.
But critics say returning home will remain a major risk for many displaced persons until ISWAP and Boko Haram can no longer carry out attacks.