SAN FRANCISCO, May 18, (THEWILL) – Apparently overwhelmed by the emerging and future humanitarian crisis occasioned by the Boko Haram insurgency in the West and Central Africa region, the Borno State Government has called on the United Nations to immediately intercede in the situation and help the affected regions.
The Chairman of Borno State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), Alhaji Grema Terab, made the call weekend in Maiduguri, the state capital, after receiving the third batch of deportees from Niger Republic.
He lamented that the Boko Haram crisis was assuming different dangerous dimensions by the day as evident in the recent deportation of about 15,000 Nigerians from Niger Republic.
Borno State had earlier received two batches of 1,200 and 1,448 deportees in addition to the latest batch of 1,600.
Lamenting the situation, Terab who said, “Today, it is Niger that is sending Nigerians packing, tomorrow it may be Chad or Cameroon or any other country in the sub region,” added that the situation calls for urgent attention first from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), then the African Union and perhaps the United Nations.
He lamented that Borno State alone would now have to bear the brunt of building a new camp for 4,248 indigenes of the state evacuated to Maiduguri even as he noted that with the creation of the new camp for those evacuated from Niger, the state has 21 camps with over 120,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs).
This, according to him, has created a heavy financial burden on the state government .
His words: “As it stands today, Borno state government has expended several billions of Naira on the problems thrown at it by the Boko Haram crisis and this has put at a standstill so many other things.
“We need the assistance of not only the federal government but the United Nations to come out of this quagmire which has put everything in the state at a near standstill.
“It was a pity that the state which had to bear the burden of 1.5 million internally displaced persons, overdrawing the facilities in Maiduguri, has to do it almost alone without appreciable assistance coming from the Nigerian Government and international agencies.”
According to him, instead of abating, the five-year-old insurgency is manifesting new problem everyday as he warned of the possibility of the insurgency causing great humanitarian crisis in the West and Central Africa sub regions.
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