Normalcy gradually returning to North East, says Buhari

‘Nigeria needs N4b for 385,000 people’

After years of devastation, President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday declared that a semblance of normal life was gradually returning to the North East.The President said people were returning to farmlands they abandoned due to Boko Haram insurgency.

President Buhari, who spoke while receiving the United Nations Population Fund’s (UNFPA) Executive Director and Under Secretary General of the United Nations, Prof Babatunde Osotimehin, restated his commitment to transparency and accountability, especially with severe shortage of resources.

In a related development, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) said yesterday that Nigeria urgently needs at least $10 million (N4 billion) to provide farming and livelihood support to 385,000 people in parts of northeast where there is food insecurity.

FAO’s Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Africa, Bukar Tijani, said the populations need urgent assistance to recover their livelihoods, which are mostly based on crop farming, artisanal fisheries and aquaculture as well as livestock production. In the last four years, this has not been possible due to the conflict.

FAO’s Emergency and Response Manager in Nigeria, Tim Vaessen also said, “This year, significant territory previously controlled by Boko Haram has been rendered accessible to humanitarian assistance, so, we have a critical opportunity to tackle the alarming levels of food insecurity.

In Adamawa State, internally displaced persons (IDPs) have rejected the proposed training by national industrial skills development programme (NISDP) organized by the Industrial Training Fund (ITF).

Spokesman of the IDPs in Yola, Mr. James Dauda, said that they will not participate in the scheme unless Federal Government provide shelter for them in their ancestral towns and villages destroyed by the insurgents.

Meanwhile, Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State has inaugurated the state’s Preaching and Pilgrims Welfare Boards (BPWB) to set “preaching standards and welfares of pilgrims” during the annual hajj exercises in Saudi Arabia.

Inaugurating the two boards in Maiduguri, Shettima said that by setting preaching standards among the Muslim communities, suspicious preaching and un-Islamic teachings, could prevent the return of Boko Haram to the country.

Responding to Buhari, Osotimehin, a former Minister of Health, said UNFPA was determined to promote health care facilities across the country, noting that reduction of maternal mortality was doable, if the country paid more attention to access to health facilities, and human resources to run them.