Breaking: Mild Protest in Teachers Village IDP Camp over Parting Largesse
Departing internally displaced persons (IDP) at Teachers Village IDP Camp in Maiduguri, Borno state, Northeast Nigeria, are currently in wild protest over alleged “unfair” distribution of parting palliative provided to them by the government.
The Humanitarian Times learnt from sources within the camp that IDPs went wild in protest following an alleged reduction in the quantity of palliative initially provided to them by the state government.
Governor Banagana Zulum, had earlier in the week visited the camp where he supervised the official inventory of the camp population with a view to providing cash and food items to them ahead their finally exiting of the camp for their homes.
When Bakassi Camp was closed at the of November, 2021, each male and female IDP who head their households got N100,000 while houses wives received N50,000 each and some huge packages of rice, maize and related condiments.
As of Thursday, it was learnt that the same amount was being shared at the Teachers Village Camp as the governor officials asked the inmates to vacate the camp.
The Humanitarian Times gathered that day-1 of the exercise went on fine. But the second day did not go down well as IDPs who filed out to collect their share of the food and cash support suddenly went wild in protest.
Interviewing some of the IDPs, mostly women, our reporter gathered that the protest was ignited by an announcement by officials handling the payment that the ration to be received on day-2 would be half of what others got the previous day.
“They came to tell us that we will not get what others got previously, and we felt that was not fair. How can they treat us differently, said a female IDP who identified herself as Zara.
Our reporter further learnt that the Borno state government, gave the cash distribution to one local NGO named Yerwa CFI, as against what happened at the Bakassi IDP Camp.
The spokesman of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) Abdulkadir confirmed the development but pointed out that “the protest had nothing to do with the food distribution aspect being handled by NEMA”.
He said NEMA has no issues with the food distribution, rather the IDPs had issues with those contracted by the Borno state government to handle the cash distribution,” he said.
More details to come later…
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