Return Of 2 Million IDPs Begins Next Year – Buhari; Boko Haram Victims 'Ignored' – Miliband

Some of the displaced people are living the UN camps (Getty Images)

President Muhammadu Buhari has assured that the return of persons displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency to their home communities will start in earnest next year.  Buhari gave the assurance at the Presidential Villa in Abuja yesterday while receiving a delegation of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) led by former British Foreign Minister David Miliband.

The president said his government would do everything within its powers to facilitate the quick return and resettlement of over two million internally displaced persons in their towns and villages.

He said his administration would welcome the support of the International Rescue Committee and other local and international non-governmental organizations the rehabilitation of internally displaced persons.

“In 2016, the return of the IDPs will start in earnest. They will return to their communities to meet destroyed schools and other infrastructure which have to be rebuilt.  With agriculture being moribund in the region in the last two years without cropping, hunger is already manifest. We will welcome all the help we can get to assist the returnees,” he said.

In a response to Miliband’s request for the Nigerian government’s priorities on the nature of assistance required for the internally displaced persons, Buhari said there was an urgent need for support in the areas of agricultural inputs, health, nutrition, water and sanitation.

BBC Africa Live reports that the world is not paying enough attention to the plight of people affected by the insurgency waged by militant Islamist group Boko Haram in north-east Nigeria, former UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has told the BBC.

Mr Miliband, who is the head of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), said international policy-makers and Nigerian authorities needed to step up efforts to help victims of the conflict. 

"It's important for us to be in the places which make the headlines, but also important to be in the places that don't," he told the BBC's Ishaq Khalid during a visit to Yola, one of the areas badly affected by the violence.

"The danger is that people are not in the headline will get forgotten until they end up in the headline for a wrong reason," Mr Miliband added.

Mr Miliband said there was a "hidden catastrophe" in north-east Nigeria.  

"Some of the people I met who recently returned from Cameroon are in desperate situation and need urgent help," he added.

IRC is one of the few international humanitarian agencies assisting some of the three million people displaced by the six-year Boko Haram insurgency.

Cameroon repatriated some Nigerians who had fled to the country to escape conflict.
Cameroon said it feared the refugees were infiltrated by the militants who have also carried out attacks on its territory.