Francis Garriba of the United Nations Refugee Agency has disclosed that the Nigerian government is putting the lives of 2.2m displaced persons at risk following plans to return them to their communities.
In a recent report by NBC News, Garriba stressed that though most of the territory once held by Boko Haram has been recaptured, the insurgents’ renewed guerrilla campaign is deadlier than ever.
“The concern from humanitarian actors is that some of these areas are still very risky for people to live in. To return the IDPs [internally displaced people] to their home communities is premature in many cases,” Garriba told NBC News.
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Continuing, Garriba said, ‘If the government wants to remake a meaningful life for these people it will take a very long time to put these infrastructures in place.’
However, President Muhammadu Buhari has pledged that an estimated 2.2 million citizens who have been forced to flee their homes would soon return home while a committee has been set up to he help rebuild the communities that have been affected.
Reports say 80 percent of Nigerians in IDP camps are women and children, as majority of the camps reported a large record of babies born in the camp in 2015.
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