NEMA Offers Relief Materials To Over 5,000 Liberated From Dikwa
SAN FRANCISCO, August 26, (THEWILL) – The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Wednesday, said it had provided a truck-load of food and other relief materials to over 5,000 starved persons recently liberated from communities in Dikwa local government area of Borno State.
The Northeast zonal coordinator of the agency, Alhaji Mohammed Kanar, who disclosed this in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, listed the over 5,000 persons to include mainly children, women and elderly who were freed in a recent military operation in Gamboru/Ngala.
He said the people were virtually imprisoned in their communities as the routes to major towns were blocked by Boko Haram insurgents who had captured major towns of Dikwa and Ngala surrounding them.
Kanar said they were living on small rations as they were compelled to depend on their livestock and farm produce without allowance for trading and commerce with the rest of the world.
According to Kanar, a team of NEMA officials as well as officials of the Borno State Government led by the Secretary to the Borno State Government (SSG), Alhaji Usman Jidda Shuwa, took the materials to the internally displaced persons (IDPs) location at Dikwa town.
Kanar, who further disclosed that the IDPs were camped in a partially destroyed state government housing estate and abandoned structure in Dikwa, said some of them who spoke to NEMA officials said they had not eaten for about three days and had to trek long distances to get to Dikwa.
“They explained that they were virtually imprisoned in their communities by insurgents who had cut off their access to the rest of the world,” he said, adding that after consulting with the Borno SSG, NEMA decided to evacuate the IDPs who were in critical conditions back to Maiduguri for proper care.
He disclosed that over 500 persons who were in critical condition were brought from Dikwa and are now camped at the Sanda Kyarimi IDPs camp at Custom area of the Maiduguri.
On the fate of the over 4,500 displaced persons left in Dikwa, the NEMA chief said “when we visited, we noticed that they need drugs and other essentials of life, this will be delivered to them in the next few days.”