The Borno State Government has appealed to the United Nations to immediately intercede in the emerging humanitarian crisis that the Boko Haram insurgency has brought on the West and Central Africa sub regions, especially on the internally displaced persons, before it gets out of hand.
Speaking to journalists in Maiduguri after receiving the third batch of deportees from Niger on Sunday, the Chairman of Borno State Emergency Management Agency, Alhaji Grema Terab, said humanitarian crisis in the continent, especially in the West and Central Africa sub regions, could assume a dangerous dimension, if nothing was urgently done to address it.
He claimed that the Boko Haram crisis was assuming a different and dangerous dimension by the day, especially as demonstrated by the recent extradition of about 15,000 Nigerians from Niger.
He said if something was not done urgently, other countries in the region could follow in the footstep of Niger whereby they could send Nigerians parking from their countries.
Terab said, “Today, it is Niger that is sending Nigerians parking. Tomorrow, it may be Chad or Cameroon or any other country in the sub region.”
He added that the situation called for urgent attention, “first, from the Economic Community of West African States, and then, the African Union, and perhaps the United Nations.”
He said that Borno State alone has to bear the brunt of building a new camp for 4,248 indigenes of the state brought to Maiduguri.
He lamented that with the creation of the new camp for those deported from Niger, the state has 21 camps with over 120,000 IDPs. He said that this has created a heavy financial burden on the Borno State Government, with several millions of naira going into the running of the camps.
He said, “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 so many other things at a standstill.
“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.”
He said that instead of abating the Boko Haram crisis, new problems were being created everyday with a chance to create massive humanitarian crisis in the West and Central Africa sub regions.
