Ngilari: War Not over Yet, Insurgents are Infiltrating IDP Camps:

 

 

* Warns most rescued women are wives of terrorists, informants

* NEMA: Only six rescued women are pregnant, warns against stigmatisation

The Governor of Adamawa State, Bala Ngalari, has warned that the ongoing war against Boko Haram terrorists is far from over, even as he raised the alarm that some of their members are disguised as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and infiltrated most of the camps.

Ngilari disclosed this at the weekend in Abuja while speaking with some journalists after the formal presentation and official launch of the biography of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh, titled: ‘Destiny Calling My Name’.

He said: “In the last two to three weeks, there have been serious attacks, even on my village today (yesterday). These people struck and killed about 12 people.

“So, the war is not over yet. Towards the end, these guys will always emerge, attack and run away, but we are making progress.”

The governor, however, assured the people that with the determined efforts of the federal government and the Nigerian military, the terrorists would be defeated.

Ngilari noted that the major concern was how to stop the infiltration of the terrorists into the IDPs’ camps, and more importantly, how to identify and separate them from the innocent citizens of the country.

“We will reach the end of the game with them and we will conquer them eventually. That is why they are coming out now, they will hit and run but like I said, they will be wiped out gradually.

“On IDPs, my problem is how to separate the chaff from the grain. I learnt that some of the guys come in as IDPs and I am afraid some of them really are.....and you know we don’t want to just accuse anybody of being a member of the Boko Haram sect.
“This is because we must do a real consulting like the type we are doing right now, but there is no doubt about the fact that some of these people in the camps are really part of them,” the governor said.
In a related development, a security source has informed THISDAY that most of the rescued women and girls, after interrogation, were found to be partners, informants and wives of the Boko Haram members.

According to the source, the danger posed by these suspects informed the military and other security agencies to relocate the women to a secured location for proper rehabilitation, de-indoctrination and re-orientation.

“This is what the public doesn’t know. During interrogation, it was discovered that most of these rescued women and young girls are wives of the terrorists. Some are even advanced informants and well indoctrinated.

“Even the children have very wired orientation about life and mostly tend to be aggressive. So a lot of works needs to be done and that’s why they were relocated into a secured place for further work,” the source said.

The Nigerian military recently confirmed the movement of 275 women and children from an IDPs camp in Yola for proper medical attention and psycho social therapy.

The Director of Defence Information, Major General Chris Olukolade, who disclosed this to PRNigeria, said the essence of evacuation was to enable the affected persons undergo a psycho-social rehabilitation programme arranged by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA).

He confirmed that they are presently in a safe location considered more conducive for them to undergo the next phase of the programme
“They are expected to be better prepared to join their communities at the end of the programme,” the source concluded.

The rehabilitation programme is one of the initiatives of the National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki, under the Soft-Approach Programme to countering terrorism.

However, as the federal government assigned therapeutic experts to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in victims of terrorism, the Director General of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) Muhammad Sani-Sidi, has warned against stigmatising the girls and women rescued from Boko Haram in the North-east saying only six of them returned with pregnancy.

The government had initiated assessment and treatment of prolonged PTSD to control the physiological symptoms, which can enable the patient to tolerate and work through the highly emotional material in psychotherapy.

Speaking at an interactive media platform hosted by PRNigeria, at the weekend, Sani-Sidi who commended the military in their combat against terrorism, said of the almost 300 rescued women and children from Sambisa forest, majority of them were children.

“Out of the 275, 63 came unaccompanied and that is very worrisome, it is a terrible situation to have children under the age of five unaccompanied, meaning they have lost their parents and we cannot link them with their parent at the moment, six of them came with pregnancy and that is a sympathetic situation,” he stated.

“I must put it on record that only six of them came with pregnancy and we must add however that we must be very careful not to stigmatise this innocent Nigerians who were under captivity and came back with pregnancy so that we don’t end up stigmatising the child that is yet unborn. I think we must respect their rights and be careful by the way we talk about the issue and we should respect their rights.

The NEMA boss explained that the success recorded by the military against Boko Haram has led to a drastic reduction in the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs), citing the instance of Adamawa State where “at the moment we have six camps which we call residential camps that are presently hosting about 27 thousand IDPs in Yola in particular and we have over 200 thousand living within the host communities whereas “we had about fourteen camps at the beginning of last year in Adamawa State alone.”

Insisting that humanitarian work cannot be handled only by government especially where terrorism activities were the cause, Sani-Sidi disclosed that his agency had enjoyed tremendous support from the Borno, Adamawa, Yobe and Gombe State governments, where IDPs’ camps are located in the North-eastern part of the country.

“I must say that we have been receiving tremendous support from other actors. We have received training and support for our personnel from the UN system, the Nigerian Red Cross Society has been with us throughout these trying periods, they have been in all our camps and all the other state emergency management agencies and indeed non-governmental organisations and civil societies. It has been a close collaboration and I must say they have all done very well,” he added.

Sani-Sidi debunked the notion that IDPs’ camps would soon be dismantled in view of the routing of Boko Haram insurgents in their areas of operation.
On the contrary, he said: “There is no specific time frame for the existence of these camps. You live in the camp as long as possible because your communities must be secured before they return. The military will have to inform NEMA that a particular community is safe before the IDPs are prepared to be returned.

“We have started like when the military informed us that Mubi North and Mubi South in Adamawa State are safe and people can go back. So we went to the community to carry out an assessment along with other stakeholders to ensure that their communities are safe because you can’t take somebody from safety to harm.

“Where they are now in camp is secured so we have to carry out independent assessment in line with international best practices to be sure that their communities are actually safe for them to return. Like seven local governments now in Adamawa state have been declared safe, so the process of return has begun and we are providing support to the IDPs to be able to return to their homes,” he explained.