Salisu Sa’adu, chairman of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Jibia Camp, in Katsina State, says the IDPs are suffering from hunger, starvation and death.
Salisu disclosed this in an interview in Jibia on Tuesday.
He said the IDPs camped in Government Girls Secondary School (GGSS) Jibia, were mainly from Kwari, Zango, shimfida,Tsauni, far faru, tsanbe, and Gurbin magarya villages of Jibia local government area of the state.
According to him, the food being provided for the refugees is not enough; hence, they are suffering from starvation, hunger and death.
He said there was not enough food for them and that there were only two policemen guarding the camp.
“Most of us are sleeping without mosquito nets and blankets, but we thank a non-governmental organisation, Medicines San Frontier, Doctors Without Borders that supplied drugs to us always at the camp.
“In fact, let me tell you, in view of the hardship we are passing through, 15 of us died, while 35 women gave birth under forced labour.”
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Salisu appealed to the state government to take steps to relocate them to their villages, to enable them to farm, and get what to feed their families before the end of the rainy season.
“We are now almost three months here, we can’t continue like this; we really want to go back to our villages and look for what to eat with our families.
“So we are appealing to government to take cogent measures and relocate us to our places,” he said.
When contacted, the chairman of Jibia local government, Bashir Mai-tan, said that the government was trying its best in feeding the refugees in the camp.
Mai-tan said apart from that, the local government released N200,000 daily for some of their needs.
Maitan said he had been having sleepless nights to ensure peace and security in the area, as well as paying ransom to secure the release of people from bandits.
He said currently, over 1,500 of his people were still being held hostage by bandits.
