No fewer than two persons were confirmed dead following the outbreak of cholera at a camp where surrendered Boko Haram terrorists are kept in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.
The development was confirmed by the officials of the Borno State government on Saturday.
Koshere Camp is one of the facilities that was recently allocated to accommodate the surging number of surrendered terrorists following the need to decongest the Hajj Camp that was initially allocated for camping the ex-terrorists.
Sources within the facility had said that the death toll on Friday and Saturday was more than 20. But officials insisted that the figure was not correct.
Zuwaira Gambo, the State Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Development, whose ministry is in charge of all the rehabilitation facilities in the camp, comfirmed that two lives were lost to the cholera outbreak that affected many of the inmates of Koshere camp.
“We had a cholera outbreak situation at the camp and we have deployed every stakeholder from the Ministry of Health to move in and fumigate the place. Before, all persons diagnosed with cholera had been moved out for proper quarantine,” she said.
On the death toll which sources had earlier said 14 deaths were recorded on Friday, and six on Saturday, the Commissioner of Women Affairs said, “I don’t know where you are getting that figures, because only two deaths were reported amongst those diagnosed with cholera.”
There are over 79,000 surrendered terrorists with their family members that have been received by the Military and the Borno State government.
The Theater Commander of the Operation Hadin Kai, Major General Christopher Musa, had recently revealed that more than 14,000 of the surrendered Boko Haram terrorists were active fighters, while the rests were innocent civilians and mostly women and children.
The Borno State government had to open two more camps in Jere and Koshere recently to decongest the Hajj Camp facility currently hosting most of the surrendered terrorists.
LEADERSHIP reports that the living condition of the repentant terrorists at the Hajj camp is a pitiable one considering the flooding of their temporary shelters, which sources said made them attempted to protest, but were calmed down by the authorities.
The alarming number of the surrendering terrorists is another humanitarian crisis which may overstretch Borno Government’s meagre resources, hence a collective responsibility is required to attend to challenges of the surging number of the surrendering former fighters and their families.
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