Relief among insurgency-affected persons in Borno as NEDC donates more food, NFIs

By Abdulkareem Haruna

The Northeast Development Commission (NEDC) has at the weekend donated large quantities of food and non-food items to persons affected by the ongoing Boko Haram war in northeast Nigeria. 

NEDC, which is the Federal Government of Nigeria’s foremost relief intervention body in the  Northeast subregion donated in response to the cases of rising hunger amongst internally displaced persons and other persons entangled in the crisis. 

On Saturday, June 25, NEDC, led by its Managing Director, Mohammed Goni-Alkali, made a massive presentation of 10,000 bags each of rice and maize flour,  as well as 4,000  cartons of noodles (spaghetti and macaroni) to the targeted starving population through the Borno state government’s State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA). 

Other food items and NFIs donated were 4,000 (5liters) gallons of vegetable oil, 5000 blankets and 5000 sleeping mats. 

The MD said as peace gradually returns to the northeast with the massive reception of repentant insurgents, a lot of efforts are being put forward to ensure the peaceful return of IDPs to their original communities. 

This, he said, has taken so many resources of the state government, that it becomes essential for the NEDC as the biggest intervention body to assist in that direction. 

“As you may be aware the federal government has set up a committee to assist the northeast in having a seamless and compact resettlement given those that have repented,” he said 

“There is going to be an interagency approach to see that people are resettled in a manner that justifies their return which is voluntary and in a secured way. But meanwhile, the commission as an intervention agency, before the big bang would happen, we deem it necessary to support the government with palliative in terms of food and non-food items so that those that are around, before they are moved back to their domains or places of choice for resettlement can, can have something to depend on. That’s why we are making this donation of foods and non-food items today” 

The Borno state Director General of SEMA, Yabawa Kolo, who received the relief items on behalf of the government thanked the NEDC for always being a worthy partner in the humanitarian enterprise. 

“This giant magnanimity is again coming from the Northeast Development Agency which will go a long way in cushioning the needs of our IDPs and their resettlement back home from within and across the borders,” she said. 

She said items like assorted vegetable oil will go a long way in helping our women to prepare nutritious meals that would help our young ones regain their nutrition deficits having gone through a long period of food deficiency. 

She said what NEDC had graciously done was in line with SEMA and other humanitarian agencies’ DDR programming which emphasized  supporting the displaced with food and some basic essential items they needed to keep them out of trauma, get them “demobilize, disarmed and deradicalise, and then be catered for under the watch of SEMA and Borno state ministry of women affairs and social development.”