Hunger: IDPs in Abuja beg FG for palliatives

The Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Wasa community of the Federal Capital Territory have appealed to the Federal Government to provide them with food palliatives and other needs to ease their lives.

Mr Joffrey Bitrus, the Chairman of Wasa IDP Camp, who spoke with journalists on Thursday, alleged that the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs had neglected them to their fate.

“Since we entered this lockdown period, we have not seen any government agency coming to help us. We are about 5,600 in the camp from Yobe, Borno and Adamawa States.

“I am begging the Federal Government to come to help us because the hunger is too much. We are in a critical condition because of the lockdown.


“NEMA and FEMA normally come here to collect our names but we have not heard anything from them.

“We are hearing in the news that Minister of Humanitarian Affairs,  Hajiya Sadiya Farouq, is sharing money and relief materials to the poor, but we have not gotten anything.

“We are suffering from hunger and starvation. We don’t have anything to eat, our youths are jobless and we can’t go back to our  villages because of the insurgency,” Bitrus said.

According to him, Farouq used to visit the camp when she was a federal commissioner at the refugees commission after which she no longer visit again.

“I am calling on her as the minister to do something for the IDPs; we are dying here.

“I know the ministry is trying, but it needs to step up and do more to fulfil its mandate on humanitarian disaster which we fall under,” Bitrus said.

However, the Special Assistant on Media and Press Affairs to Farouq, Mr Salisu Dambatta, said IDPs in Wasa community are under the care of Federal Capital Territory.

“They are under the care and management of the FCT Emergency Management Agency,” Dambatta said.