Zulum moves to support Borno IDP camp fire victims

Disburses N100m to repentant political thugs
Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno State has directed the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) to submit a list of victims in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp that caught fire on Saturday, for government’s support.

The inferno at Murna Elbadaw IDP camp, which had been sheltering about 10,000 households, comprising over 50,000 displaced persons from seven local councils, claimed three lives, while 17 persons sustained injuries.

Sympathising with the victims, yesterday, at the camp, Zulum directed the Director General of SEMA, Hajiya Yabawa Kolo, to submit the list of affected households and individuals for immediate support.

He stated that the state would also collaborate with the Federal Government and humanitarian partners to return the IDPs to their communities.

“The remaining IDPs in camps are to be returned to Ngwom and other liberated communities in the state,” he said, adding that no IDP would be forced to return to their ancestral homes.

North East Coordinator, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Usman Aji, told the governor that the fire started about 1pm from one of the tents, where an IDP was cooking, and spread to other parts, destroying over 100 makeshift shelters before it was brought under control by the state’s fire service.

THE governor has also disbursed N100 million to 152 youths, who renounced thuggery, to enable them set up businesses in the liberated communities.

Disbursing the money at the weekend, in Maiduguri, Zulum stated: “With the completion of your entrepreneurship training, you are to be engaged in productive economic activities to restore the destroyed means of livelihoods.”

According to him, the beneficiaries are to repay only 50 per cent of N100 million to the state government in three years.

“You are to contribute to socio-economic growth to ensure contiguous developments at the grassroots,” he said, adding that 16 of the youths would receive N2 million each as take-off loans, while others are to get N500,000 each.

The governor also pledged educational scholarship to a child from each of the beneficiaries’ family.

The Commissioner for Youths, Sports and Empowerment, Saina Buba, said the repentant thugs had been supported under the special programme tagged ‘Super Youth Entrepreneurship Training’.