‘B’Haram displaced 800,000, burnt 254 schools’

Over 800,000 people have been displaced while
254 schools have been destroyed as a result of the
activities of insurgents in the three states of
Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, the National
Emergency Management Agency has said.
According to the agency, a total of 120,077
students were out of school as at the end of 2014
due to insurgency in the three states, adding that
the Safe School Initiative of the Federal
Government was initiated to absorb the students in
schools outside the troubled states.
The agency’s Principal Relief Officer, Mr. Awal
Abubakar, said 276 schools had been affected by
the deadly activities of the Islamic extremists, Boko
Haram.
Abubakar, while making a presentation to officials
from the United States Agency for International
Development at the headquarters of NEMA in Abuja
on Tuesday, said 73 schools were affected in
Adamawa, 171 in Borno and 56 in Yobe.
On the actual number of students affected in the
various states, he said, “Seven thousand one
hundred and thirty-five school children have been
out of school as a result of insurgency in
Adamawa; 113,635 in Borno and 73,894 in Yobe.
“115 schools have been completely destroyed and
the largest number of destroyed schools is in
Borno, which is 101 schools. 139 other schools
have been partially destroyed.”
He noted that the figures covered the period that
the insurgency started in 2009 till the end of last
year. He explained that the total number of
internally displaced persons across the country as
of January 2015 was 873,703.
Awal also observed that the health sector was
badly hit by the insurgency, but explained that the
Federal Government had ensured that there was
adequate provision of relief materials for IDPs
across various camps in the affected states.
In his address, the Director-General, NEMA, Mr.
Sani Sidi, said some non-governmental
organisations operating in the country were
complicating the figures of displaced persons in
Nigeria.
He said the NGOs inflate the figures in order to get
funding from international organisations such as
USAID, adding that such “fraudulent figures”
should be discarded forthwith.
Gesturing towards the visiting foreign officials, Sidi
said, “Of course, there are gaps, but we are
working hard to bridge these gaps. The NGOs
know that if they don’t make the figures large, they
won’t get funding from organisations like yours
(USAID).”
He specifically faulted the report by the Internal
Displacement Monitoring Centre, stressing that
their “report of three million IDPs in Nigeria is a
huge fraud and completely untrue.”
Sidi said, “We are happy that the International
Organisation for Migration came to Nigeria to
conduct a similar findings and our figures have
been verified by the IOM because ours and theirs
(figures) are quite similar.
“Meanwhile, how can the IDMC put together IDPs
figure for 10 years? We are going to challenge that
because it is completely untrue.”