By Adoyi M. Aba
Abuja
Director-General of National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Muhammad Sani-Sidi, has said that over 410 births were recorded between August and September, while 187 marriages were conducted at the Internally Displaced Persons camps in Borno and Adamawa states.
Sani-Sidi, according to a statement issued yesterday in Abuja by the agency’s Senior Information Officer, Sani Datti, stated this when members of Bring Back Our Girls Group (BBOG) paid him a courtesy call in his office.
He explained that 100 marriages were conducted in Maiduguri camps alone and 87 were recorded in Adamawa camps, adding that emergency education for IDPs children became a major priority “after unprecedented insurgency attacks on students, teachers and schooling infrastructure where about 269 teachers lost their lives.”
He said: “The agency, in ensuring efficient management of camps, has trained personnel in camp coordination and camp management (CCCM) and deployed to manage various IDP camps in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states and to provide to the specialised needs of vulnerable people during emergencies.”
He appealed to the advocacy group to extend their platform to other issues like “unaccompanied minors and mass childbirths in the camps as disaster management is multidisciplinary, multidimensional and multitasking.”
Earlier, the leader of the Group, Dr Oby Ezekwesili, expressed displeasure over the abduction of the Chibok girls, saying that “today marked 596th day they have been abducted” and looked up to NEMA for more cooperation and mobilisation efforts to protect and care for the vulnerable in the society.
Also speaking, the chairman of the Bring Back Our Girls Group, Aisha Yesufu, said they were at agency’s head office to seek collaboration “in areas of education, IDPs living conditions, security, health and so on, and how our platform can be helpful to support the efforts of the federal government and the IDPs where the agency deems it necessary.”
