Bauchi government debunks report on IDPs eating onion leaves to survive

Bauchi State government has debunked reports that Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, at a camp in the state were eating onion leaves to survive.

The State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA)’s Director, Relief and Rehabilitation, Kabiru Yusuf Kobi, while addressing journalists over the issue in Bauchi, said that the state doesn’t have a single IDP Camp as reported.

The News Agency of Nigeria had reported, on Sunday, that children in the IDPs camp at the outskirt of Bauchi town were feeding on onion leaves to survive.

But Kobi argued that, since the beginning of the Boko Haram insurgency, there had never been a time that they had an IDPs camp as they are always integrated into host communities across the state.

He said that the IDPs live among the people in the host communities and share the available facilities like hospitals, schools and other things.

Kobi noted that, the IDPs are always enumerated and identified by relevant agencies like NEMA, PCNI and international organisations like Red Cross, International Organisation for Migration and others.

He added that assistance in various forms were always given to the IDPs to make their lives better.

Speaking on the Runde-Bin IDPs community, the SEMA official informed that, the community was set up in 2018 when some IDPs, living in camps in Maiduguri, came down to Bauchi to settle and farm.

He said that the people, who were a little over 200 in number, were given the land on request by Hajiya Maryam Abacha and they were allowed to settle after all necessary steps had been taken.

He said that after settling, they beging to farm to get what they eat.

He therefore, said that it would a mischief for anybody to report that “those people who farm what they eat are now eating Onion leaves to survive.”