By Muhammad Amaan
The North East Development Commission (NEDC) says it has closed 90 per cent of Internally Displaced (IDPs) Camps spread across Borno State.
Managing Director of NEDC, Mohammed Goni Alkali disclosed this on Monday in Abuja.
He said the commission had facilitated the successful return of over 90 per cent of IDPs to their ancestral homes in the state
Fielding questions from newsmen, Alkali said the feat was made possible through collaboration with the state government as well as other critical stakeholders in the country.
“Two years ago, there were about 52 IDPs Camps in Maiduguri alone, but today we have officially reduced them to five because we have return most of the IDPs to their ancestral homes.
“With the efforts of Borno state government, we are providing the necessary support to encourage them to go back to their ancestral homes.
“We are building houses for the returnees across the North-East zone,” he said
Alkali added that the NEDC has built 500 housing units in Maiduguri for the IDPs, saying they are replicating the same project in each state of the North-East.
“We are also embarking on empowerment programmes to encourage IDPs to go back to their ancestral homes.
“Most of them left their homes as farmers and fishermen, so we empowered them in those lines.”
Responding to a question on why most of the intervention programmes were located in Borno state, he said, it was because of the level of destruction by insurgents in the state.
He added that, the state had high concentration of victims of insurgency.
“There is what we call a law of proportion in mathematics. 60 per cent of the destructions and victims of insurgency are in Borno state. That is why you see that the intervention programmes are more in Borno,” he said.
