2016 budget: Dogara seeks additional funding for IDPs

60,000 births recorded yearly – UNHRC report

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, on Monday urged President Muhammadu Buhari to ensure adequate budgetary provision for the resettlement of millions of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the 2016 budget proposal.

The Presidential Committee on Boko Haram Victims Support Fund chaired by T. Y. Danjuma, which was inaugurated on July 31, 2014, has so far realised about N80 billion, according to Yussuff Lasun, deputy speaker, House of Representatives, at the just concluded 2015 Inter parliamentary union held in Geneva, Switzerland.

Dogara, who spoke at the sensitisation workshop on the role of the parliament in addressing the challenges of IDPs in Nigeria, held at the instance of the House Committee on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) Refugees, and Initiatives on the North in collaboration with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), also applauded Buhari for setting aside the N5 billion in the 2015 supplementary budget recently sent to the National Assembly for approval.

Statistics from the UNHCR showed that 68 percent of IDPs in Nigeria were children and there were so far about 60,000 births in the IDP campaigns across the country.

In the bid to effectively address the challenges in line with international best practice, the Speaker urged the Presidency to transmit to the National Assembly, an executive bill on IDPs and other relevant treaties for domestication of the Kampala Convention

“For our purposes, I think we should adopt the description of IDPs as persons or group of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalised violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognised state border,” (Article 1(k) of the Kampala Convention). Large-scale development and environmental projects can also generate IDPs. What is clear from the above definition is that IDPs are citizens of our country. They are not refugees from another country.

“They are our constituents, some of who voted us into office. As legislators, we have a duty and responsibility to care for them, protect them, assist them, provide for their needs, their welfare and to advocate on their behalf. To be displaced or uprooted from one’s home is one of the most degrading and humiliating experiences that can befall any human being.

“They are very vulnerable and are exposed to all forms of exploitation and misery. Women and female children are sometimes subjected to sexual abuse, and trafficking. IDPs lack appropriate shelter, food, water, sanitation, healthcare, child protection and educational opportunities. Access to money and work is severely limited or non-existent,” he noted.

On his part, Sani Zorro, chairman, House Committee on IDPs, Refugees and North East Initiative, observed that the over 2 million IDPs scattered across different camps, faced “substandard facilities, most of whom are women and orphaned children, with hunger and malnutrition as the common denominators that define their lives.”