Inside lives of Tafawa Balewa’s 2,000 displaced citizens
Officials of the Nigerian Red Cross Society, Nigerian Civil Defence and officials of Jama’atu Nasril Islam, Fityanul Islam, were seen at the camps rendering assistance to the internally displaced persons. Bauchi State Secretary of the Nigerian Red Cross Society, Alhaji Adamu Abubakar said after the 27th January crisis, they initially accommodated 3,600 displaced persons […]
Officials of the Nigerian Red Cross Society, Nigerian Civil Defence and officials of Jama’atu Nasril Islam, Fityanul Islam, were seen at the camps rendering assistance to the internally displaced persons.
Bauchi State Secretary of the Nigerian Red Cross Society, Alhaji Adamu Abubakar said after the 27th January crisis, they initially accommodated 3,600 displaced persons from Tafawa Balewa in Tafawa Balewa and Gontakurwa camps, but later when the March fracas occurred, they received over 2,500 more displaced persons, “because we discovered about six other camps that we didn’t know existed at the beginning. The camps are located in different villages.”
Abubakar said even though majority of them have relocated to their relatives in Bauchi, Dass and other villages, they still have over 4,000 refugees presently. The Nigerian Red Cross called upon government and other donor agencies to do more and assist them with basic human needs such as food, toiletries, mats, blankets, drugs, soap and other necessities as clothes, since these people have lost all their properties and houses.
The secretary said apart from the four injured people with gun shots, they had recorded children with cases of measles, cerebro-spinal meningitis (CSM) and among the elderly, there were people with common ailments.
He said, “we have offered first aid treatments to the victims at the initial stage. The state Emergency Management Agency had distributed food items, mats and blankets to the victims then but now, the food has finished and we have discovered more internally displaced persons in about six different camps”.
A pregnant woman, Aishatu Musa at Gontakurwa IDP camp, told Weekly Trust that she lost her husband during the fracas, and with the aid of some good samaritan, she escaped with her two children to Gontakurwa from Tafawa Balewa on foot. She appealed to the government to intervene and bring an end to this incessant killings so that peace will return to Tafawa Balewa and the environs. “If government does not do anything significant, Tafawa Balewa will be polarized like Plateau state,” she expressed.
The chairperson of women in Bununu camp, Malama Maryam Isiyaka, told Weekly Trust that they are very happy with the assistance they received from the government, philanthropists and individuals in Bununu camp. She said they have food but their only problem is lack of enough buckets, mats and blankets.
She appealed to the state government to assist them with more food stuff because the supply they have in their store is about to finish. She also called on the government to make efforts to settle them in their houses in Tafawa Balewa.
It was reported last week that the NEMA had supplied 300 bags of rice,155 bags of beans ,70 bags of guineacorn,70 bags of millet,320 cartons of bathing soap,70 bags of sugar, and 75 bags of salt to the 4,500 IDPs in Bauchi state
When Weekly Trust went to the office of the State Primary Health Care Agency (SPHCA), the chairman of the agency, Dr Musa Mohammed, was said to have travelled out of the state but a senior staff of the agency told this reporter that “even though we are not allowed to speak to newsmen, I am aware that even yesterday, we sent our staff to the IDP camps where they said they recorded cases of measles and CSM but it has not reached an epidemic. We have distributed drugs to all the camps yet, we will still visit them next week to see the area of assistance they need.”
The Permanent Secretary of the State Emergency Management Agency, Alhaji Mahmood A. Garba was also not in the office at the time of filing this report to comment on the issue of the feeding of the IDPs in the camps.