Group advocates displaced persons camp in South-East

A group, the Igbo Speaking Community in Lagos State, on Thursday asked the Federal Government to open a camp in the South-East for Igbos, who returned from the North due to the activities of the Boko Haram sect. 

The group, which made the demand while addressing journalists in Enugu, stressed that the returnees should be considered as Internally Displaced Persons. 

President-General of the group, Chief Ebere Ubani, who was in company with the chairman of 'Internally Displaced Persons in the South-East', Patrick Mba, said the Igbo returnees also deserved an IDP camp like their counterparts in the northern part of the country. 

Ubani expressed shock that despite immeasurable losses suffered by the Igbos as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency, they were not considered and treated as IDPs.

According to him, whereas other IDPs are being catered for, the Igbo returnees have been left to roam helplessly in all the nooks and crannies of the South-East, where, according to him, "the political nomenclature on the ground for whatever reasons has failed to take cognizance of this human tragedy."

Urging the Federal Government to immediately open an IDPs camp in the South-East, the group said it had already started to facilitate the proposal by collecting names and addresses of the returnees.

Mba added, "It becomes imperative to appeal to the Federal Government, South-East governors and political leaders to live up to their vows and provide succour to these millions of displaced Ndigbo so that they will not end up like the Biafran ex-service men and women, who today liter major streets in the South-East.

"We have implicit confidence that President Muhammadu Buhari shall do the needful and help in palliating the excruciating pains these IDPs are currently going through.” 

The group accused successive administrations in Nigeria of a "deliberate neglect and marginalisation" of the South-East zone.