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Our Children Now Sleep In Open Space, Cry Occupants Of Demolished Abuja IDP Camp

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3 years ago

January 3, 2023

Ireporteronline

Our Children Now Sleep In Open Space, Cry Occupants Of Demolished Abuja IDP Camp

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About 3,000 people displaced from Durumi Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDP) camp located at Durumi, Area 1 in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, have cried out for government assistance to ameliorate their plight.

Chairman of the camp, Aminu Amadu, who narrated their ordeal to newsmen who visited the camp, alongside ActionAid Nigeria to donate relief items to the displaced persons, said he was at the camp when he leant that some government officials who claimed to be from the Presidency invaded the camp with 70 vehicles, conveying members of Joint task force and bulldozers to demolish their structures.

He said: “I went to meet the Commander of the operation and he just told me that we should start parking our clothes, and other important things we will need as they are going to demolish our place. I asked him on whose order they were coming to demolish our place because the government is aware we are staying here. He told me to go and meet the Minister. I felt they would have finished demolition before I come back from the minister because there were about four bulldozers at the camp.”

Amadu said they have been working together with the Department of State Security Service (DSS), the military and other security agencies to purge the camp of any criminal element, disclosing that about 17 Boko Haram members have been caught in the camp and handed over to security agencies and several AK-47 and local pistols have also been recovered and handed over.

Woman leader of the camp, Iliayatu Ayuba, said: “I cried so much after the demolition, I don’t know why they decided to do this to us, government knows us, Commissioner for Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons knows us and they have been coming to the camp, they never gave us any information that they were coming to demolish because of the terrorists that were living in the camp with us.

“If they had informed us earlier we would have made better plans, they came and demolished everything, women and children are sleeping outside in cold weather.

“One of the women even delivered a baby before her time after she went into labour because of the demolition, after I delivered the baby , the baby didn’t cry until after an hour. Now the baby and the mother sleep in the cold. The woman cried and asked me where she would go with her baby.”
She said for several years government have been promising to relocate them, which they are yet to fulfill.“I beg them in the name of God to fulfill this promise, we are human beings, we are Nigerians, where do they want us to go. Government is taking care of the refugees more than us, they can find a place where they are putting the refugees to keep us too.

“As of today, a lot of killings are still going on in Gwoza council. I was there three months ago, it was the military that escorted me to and fro my community, as of two days ago, they still killed people there, so where do we go now,” she lamented.