Representatives of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) across Benue State have called on the state government to ensure the fumigation of all the camps to nib in the bud the issue of snakes and mosquito bites.
This is even as the IDPs lamented a situation where their women and children who go out of the camp in search of water and fire woods are ambushed, raped and killed by the marauding herdsmen.
The IDPs also called on the government to empower the IDPs especially those with disabilities, women, and young persons with skill acquisitions to enable them to have something to fall back on when they finally go back to their ancestral home.
Earlier, the commissioner for humanitarian and disaster management, Aondowase Kunde said, the workshop tagged, “Benue State Durable Solution Framework Development and Action Planning” is aimed at finding ways to restore human rights of the IDPs.
According to him, “Benue State has been facing a severe humanitarian crisis as over one million internally displaced persons (IDPs) are caught in the web of sustained attacks and displacement.”
The representatives of the IDPs who disclosed that most of them have been in camps since 2014, lamented that the attacks have severely impacted on the education of their children and the health condition of all. They also said all their social amenities like schools, hospitals and even bridges are destroyed.
“We the IDPs are longing to return back to our ancestral homes, but our main problem is security of our lives and properties because any attempt by some of the IDPs to access their ancestral home are being thwarted by the armed herdsmen who ambush and kill them,” they said.
Some of the IDPs who spoke during the workshop include Rapheal Asua from Anyiin, Mlumun Ugen from Ugba, Philip Ugber from Gbajimba among others. They described the situation in the camps as hell on earth especially with the lack of medical facilities which has turned any health emergency to a potential fatality.
They lamented a situation where some host communities are coming to struggle with them for scarce resources that are brought to them either by government or philanthropists.
They called on the government to ensure that all the infrastructure destroyed by herdsmen in their communities like churches, schools, hospitals among others as well as their homes are rebuild to make life easier for them.
