by Kayode Idowu
The National Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday said that 400,000 persons had been internally displaced in the troubled North-eastern region of the country from January 2014 till date.
Speaking to journalists in Maiduguri, Borno State capital, the information officer of the Northeast zonal office of the agency, AbdulKadir Ibrahim, said the number of Internally- Displaced Persons from January to July in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states before the recent attacks in Gwoza and Doron-Baga stood at 360,462.
Ibrahim said that Borno State alone had 183,031 IDPs, with Adamawa and Yobe recording 147,198 and 30,233 respectively from January till the end of last month.
The NEMA spokesman said the situation had overstretched the agency.
“Because of the magnitude of cases of areas affected by the insurgency and the numbers of IDPs, NEMA has trained volunteers and Emergency Management Vanguard who work with Red Cross to set up camps and to register internally displaced persons,” he said.
He also explained that those recently displaced as a result of the capture of Gwoza by the insurgents had been relocated to Madagali in Adamawa State and Uba in Borno State, with others fleeing to neighbouring Cameroon.
The insurgents on Sunday reportedly attacked Doron-Baga, where unspecified number of people was killed. Sixteen persons, who suffered gunshot injuries during the attack, were brought to the State Specialists Hospital.
