The Federal Government has called all humanitarian response agencies operating in Nigeria, including the United Nations, European Unions, and other development partners to urgently deploy their services to Benue State to tackle the humanitarian crisis.
Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr Betta Edu, made the call when she visited the Ichiwa Internally Displaced Persons camp situated within the North Bank axis of Makurdi.
A statement issued Friday by the minister’s media adviser, Rasheed Olanrewaju Zubair, said Edu visited the camp in the company of the state governor, Reverend Father Hyacinth Alia.
The minister said it would be impossible for the burden of the 14,000 IDPs in Ichiwa and millions of others in several other IDP camps located across the three senatorial districts of the state to be shouldered alone by both state and the federal government.
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She described the humanitarian situation she met on ground as unacceptable and requiring immediate concerted effort to address.
Dr Edu assured the IDPs of President Tinubu’s unwavering determination to find lasting solutions to their plight, noting that if urgent and immediate actions were not taken, the situation could degenerate into unmitigated humanitarian crises.
“I feel so heavy in my heart, and I will have sleepless nights about what I have seen here until we find solutions. A household of six living in a small shanty that can’t even accommodate the width of my arm, made of light trampoline. When it rains, mothers and children are out there in the rain.
“We are here to build low-cost houses (two sites at the same time) for the displaced persons. It should be a matter of emergency for all agencies and all stakeholders in humanitarian responses to urgently deploy to Benue to help remedy the situation because the condition I see here is unacceptable.
“Let me re-emphasise that the humanitarian situation in Benue is devastating, their people must be resettled properly in their ancestral homes; the government cannot do it alone, all hands must be on deck, Benue needs humanitarian support and must be treated so urgently,” she said.
Also speaking, Governor Alia commended the president for fulfilling the promise he made to the people of Benue by committing to the resettlement of the IDPs in their ancestral homes.
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