By Umar Yusuf

Yola—Coordinator of the Nigerian Joint Response, NJR, a humanitarian programme in the North-East, Hanna Van Schie, said yesterday that since the Boko Haram insurgency began in 2009, over 14.8 million persons had been affected, with only eight percent of Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, living in camps.

Bama IDP Camp: Cross Section of women at Bama IDP Camp in Maiduguri during Minister’s Tour of Bama . Photo by Gbemiga Olamikan.

She said government of the Netherlands had earmarked 5.3 million Euros to cater for 176,000 IDPs.

Schie told a workshop on the IDPs in Yola, Adamawa State capital, that with support from the Dutch government and four NGOs (Save the Children, Oxfam Novib, Stichting Vluchteling/IRC and Tearfund), implementing NJR had helped Nigeria to overcome the humanitarian needs in the areas of food, security and protection in host communities and IDPs camps.

Schie, who is working for Save the Children in the Netherlands, said according to 2016 Humanitarian Needs Overview, only eight percent of IDPs were living in the formal camps, leaving the remaining 92 percent in host communities supported with the limited and stretched resources of their hosts.

The state Commissioner for Border Integration, Abubakar Magaji, who represented Governor Mohammed Jibrilla at the workshop, lauded the efforts of NGOs in the state and the North-East region in providing relief assistance to IDPs.