Boko Haram: Mission helps 40,000, seeks more help for IDPs

The InnerCity Mission (ICM) for Children has said that over 40, 000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), by Boko Haram, bandits and other circumstances, especially children, have benefited from its intervention programs in the Northern through its Hope Relief Missions (HRM).

The Director of the organisation, Omoh Alabi, said this on Friday in Abuja at a news conference on the coming maiden Conference with the theme “Eradicating Poverty- Rethinking the Strategy” coming up in Abuja.

According to her, the aims of the conference was to mobilize, awaken and call to action all stakeholders in the sector, national, international, government and non-governmental among others to do more for the IDPs and other vulnerable and to take concrete sustainable actions to end poverty in the country.

She said that the organisation executes its child-centred interventions through eight core programs; of education, feeding; family strengthening and livelihood; health and nutrition; child safety and advocacy; shelter, humanitarian response; and faith and development.

“In Nigeria, over 40, 000 Internally Displaced Persons particularly children benefited from our intervention programs in Northern Nigeria through our Hope Relief Missions. Our goal with this conference is to bring critical stakeholders together in one place, we expect to come out with key resolutions and actionable strategies from the cross-pollination of ideas and strategies to eradicate poverty in all forms,” Alabi said.

She said that the beneficiaries include survivors of the Boko Haram insurgencies in Adamawa, Borno and Taraba states; national flood disaster victims in Niger, Benue and Kogi states; land dispute victims in Bakassi Peninsula, and victims of man-made disaster at the collapsed School Building site in Lagos State among others.

She said that the First Lady, Hajiya Aisha Buhari; Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouk; Country Director of UNICEF, Mr. Peter Hawkins; and National Orientation Agency (NOA) DG, Dr. Garba Abari among others would be at the event in Abuja.

“All our interventions are child centred and align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals through which we have impacted over 20 million indigent beneficiaries mostly children around the world in hard-to-reach communities, from one country in 2005, to over 60 countries in 2020,” she said.

Alabi said that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, agreed in 2015 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, must not be neglected as this represent the collective aspirations for a better life and provide a minimum road map on how to get there.

She said, “However, they can only be achieved if governments, civil society and international agencies collaborate in developing new strategies to address the issue of poverty globally from a new perspective.”