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Shettima: NGOs reaping from IDPs’ woes

By Abdullateef Salau

Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima, has says some Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are defrauding foreign philanthropists by appealing for funds under the pretence of trying to help internally displaced persons in the state.

Shettima spoke yesterday in Abuja at a High Level Emergency Roundtable on the humanitarian crisis in Borno State.

He said the NGOs took pictures of insurgency victims and shared them on the social media, targeting unsuspecting philanthropists to part with funds. But the funds, he said, ended up in private pockets.

He corroborated the submission of the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Nigeria, Mohammed Elmunir Safieldin, who said most of the pictures of critically malnourished infants, children and adults in circulation on social media were those of victims recently rescued by the armed forces from their Boko Haram abductors.

“I need to open up here by saying that in the midst of credible organizations trying to help us in Borno, we have seen occasional instances of some business groups masquerading as NGOs smiling to the banks on the agony of our people.

“I do not mean to disrespect any sincere NGO but there are those I have seen, whose only interest is to go round thousands of IDPs and figuring out sick and skinny looking infants to pose for the cameras with them and upload on the social media mainly to attract funding from concerned philanthropists abroad,” he said.

The governor also deplored the statement by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) otherwise called Doctors Without Borders, that there was acute malnutrition at the IDP camp in Bama with hundreds of child deaths.

Shettima said MSF completely ignored the fact that interventions were already being made to address the unfortunate cases of malnutrition, a situation he said was unhelpful.

While acknowledging that the situation at the Bama camp was “overwhelming”, he said the government, with the support of a few reputable organisations, was doing its best to improve the situation.

“As at the time the statement was issued, over 100 children were hospitalized out of over 1000 malnourished children and adults evacuated from Bama and placed under special care in Maiduguri,” he said.

He argued that displaced persons’ camps even in developed nations were not without challenges. Shettima called for caution as the government strives to bring the myriad of problems associated with the management of the humanitarian crisis in the North-east to an end.

FG asks ECOWAS centre to rescues Borno malnourished children

By Ojoma Akor

The Federal Government has asked the ECOWAS Regional Centre for Disease Control (RCDC) to dispatch an emergency response team to assist children dying from malnutrition in Borno State.

The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, gave the directive yesterday to the Acting Executive Director of the centre, Prof. Abdulsalami Nasidi, at the inaugural meeting of the governing board of the ECOWAS Regional Centre for Disease Control (RCDC) in Abuja .

He said the government had declared a nutritional emergency in Borno State to save children and assisting them was the first task of the governing board.

The minister said the decision to establish the centre was reached following the impact of the Ebola outbreak which exposed the weakness in the health system and unpreparedness to respond to other serious health security threats.

He said the federal government was committed to providing necessary infrastructure for the operation of the centre in line with the existing memorandum of understanding on it and the acceptance to use the Nigeria centre as a platform for its take off.

Acting Executive Director of the ECOWAS RCDC, Prof. Abdulsalami Nasidi, said nearly 40 percent of the burden of diseases in the world was borne by Africa, adding that except the continent prepared well to handle the emergencies, it would keep jumping from one problem to the other.

Earlier, the Director-General of the West Africa Health Organisation (WAHO) Dr Crespin Xavier, said the resolutions designating countries to serve on the governing council of ECOWAS RCDC for the next two years was approved at the 17th Ordinary Session of the ECOWAS Assembly of Health Ministers in Guinea Bissau in April.

We evacuated 550 malnourished children from Bama-NGO

By Taiwo Adeniyi

A Non Governmental Organization, Empower54, said it had evacuated 550 malnourished children who were among the rescued people from Sambisa forest in Bama, Borno State.

The group’s chairperson, Modupe Ozolua, said in a statement in Abuja said the children were among 1, 800 people taken from the Bama’s Internally Displaced Persons camp to Maiduguri with the support of the Borno State government.

She said acting on the permission of Governor Kashim Shettima, the children were taken to the newly completed Nurses’ Village Estate in Maiduguri, adding that the governor also provided 15 large school buses for their evacuation and instructed several government agencies to play different roles in ensuring that the children got proper treatment on arrival.

“When the evacuation team and children arrived in Maiduguri at 10pm that night, the governor invited MSF (Doctors without Borders) to assist the state medical personnel in ensuring that the children received the best care possible. It was at that point that MSF first got involved in the children from Bama,” she said.

She said she was surprised to read about the reported 200 children that died from malnutrition and starvation in the state, adding that during the group’s four day stay in Bama they were not told of such incident.

She said the group as a means to sustain the intervention, would establish four critical care nutrition centres across four locations within the state.

The centres, she said, were critical because humanitarian aids were not being sent to communities outside Maiduguri and all infrastructure, including hospitals outside of Maiduguri were destroyed by Boko Haram.

Police get new spokesman, nab suspect over priest’s killing

By Ronald Mutum

The Inspector-General Police (I-G), Mr Ibrahim Idris yesterday named Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Don Awunah as the Force Public Relations Officer (FPRO) to replace the Acting Spokesperson, ACP Olabisi Kolawole.

ACP Kolawole, the first female FPRO, who disclosed this to newsmen in Abuja, said the appointment was in line with police tradition.

She thanked the media for the support given to her and urged them to extend same to the new spokesman.

Responding, Awunah promised to increase relations between the police and the public and

urged the media to give him all the necessary support to effectively discharge his duties.

Until his appointment, Awunah was the DCP in charge of Homicide Section of Force Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (FCIID) Abuja.

Meanwhile, the Acting IGP, Ibrahim Idris has announced the arrest of a suspect by the Benue state Police Command over the kidnap and murder of a catholic priest, Reverend Father John Adeyi, in Otukpa, Benue State.

He told newsmen during his maiden Senior Officers’ Conference at the Force Headquarters in Abuja while investigation into the murder of the priest was in progress, one suspect is already in police custody undergoing interrogation.

Idris directed the Zone 8 Command of the police and the state police commissioners to improve security along the Lokoja-Okene-Benin area, over increasing spate of kidnapping.