The North-East Development Commission (NEDC) has organised a training for stakeholders from 65 local government areas on the dangers of landmines and other explosive remnants of war in Yobe, Adamawa and Borno states.
This is to ensure the safety of returnees to states ravaged by insurgency.
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The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of (NEDC), Dr Mohammed Alkali, disclosed this while flagging off a 3-day training on “Mine Risk Education” held in Maiduguri.
A total of 1,300 participants were drawing from three States for the basic mines risk awareness.
Alkali noted that unexploded rockets, IEDs and missiles can be extremely dangerous and can slow down the military operations as well as the returning of displaced persons to their ancestral homes.
According to the United Nations, more than three million people have been displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency since the start of its campaign in the northeast region 12 years ago.
“The objective of this training is to ensure that the IDPs and other affected citizens that now are going back to their original homes are safe.
“We want the farmlands, schools, roads and even military operations to be safe.
“It is in response to the challenge of mines, ERW, unexploded ordnances, bombs, abandoned in the north east, that the NEDC has developed a mine risk education training package to be delivered to selected persons and volunteers from the north eastern states of Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe.
“We designed a 3- day MRE training that will be across all the 65 local government areas of the 3 states.
“A total of 1,300 participants (20 from each of the 65 LGAs) will be trained on basic mine risk awareness and to serve as community MRE teams to cascade the mine risk awareness training in their individual LGAs,” Mohammed stated.
Funding
In his remarks, CEO of Makesafe Humanitarian Safety Service, AVM Ibrahim Umaru (Rtd), said the training was funded by NEDC and implemented by MakeSafe to provide the mine educators with basic awareness.
He also said the exercise, which is for three days, is a response to threats posed by the population of war affected areas of Northeast of unexploded and other explosive remnants of war.
”Essentially, the objective of the programme is to ensure that the participants observe proper safety procedures and take appropriate action in the event of incidences involving landmines or unexploded ordinances.
”So, we are educating people who will be mine risk educators, who will go back to their individual local government areas and take the mine risk education programme to their local government areas,” AVM Umar said.
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