By; TINA PHINEAS, Yola.
Government has been urged to to give more attention and support to the Internally Displace Persons (IDPs) living in camps and host
communities in the Northeastern part of the country.
Peter Egwudah, Progamme Manager, Civil Society for Poverty Eradication (CISCOPE) who made the disclosure maintained that there is the need for government at the federal and state level to do more for the IDPs.
According to him, government is not doing well, every day we hear stories of food stuff and other items meant for IDPs been diverted, government needs to step up on its primary responsibility as these IDPs are citizens of Nigeria and their rights needs to be protected.
Egwudah maintained that CISCOPE is geared towards ensuring that the IDPs exercise their rights, assert their dignity as full citizens and take control of their lives that was rudely snatch from them by the insurgents.
“CISCOPE is poised in bridging the gap in poverty knowledge and mobilizing the poor, most especially the IDPs to enable them participate in taking decision that affects their lives”, he stated.
The programme manager says that most of these IDPs have been seriously traumatized, they have lost everything they had worked for, and their total livelihood and infrastructure has all been destroyed.
In line with our objective which is to save lives, and protect the
livelihood of IDPs and conflict affected communities, we provide
agricultural seed and extension services to IDPs, he added.
“So far, 130,000 female and male headed households have improved access to sufficient amount of food to cover daily food needs through food distribution/cash transfer activities”, he disclosed.
Egwudah stated further that 4,000 female and male returning IDPs farmers and host families have improved agricultural production capacity through the provision of seed and agric tools.
“130,000IDPs and host have access to safe water and sanitation and are able to put in place good hygiene practice”
“We also employ the strong among the returning IDPs to be involved in the reconstruction of their communities and we pay them 14,000 Naira monthly for the services they rendered”, He added.
