UN angry after Buhari apparently shuns meeting held to help Nigeria's IDPs
By Rotimi Akinola and Agency Report
President Muhammadu Buhari, and his political entourage to the United Nations General Assembly, seemed to have ignored (or is it forgotten) Nigeria’s swelling internally displaced persons.
So the high and mighty of Nigerian politics left the comfort (or whatever) of Aso Rock in Abuja and jetted away to New York…but missed an event designed to help alleviate the vestige of Boko Haram’s terrorism.
At least three million Nigerians have been displaced by the deadly activities of Boko Haram, and sundry environmental disasters. Three million. At least 1.4 million of the IDPs are children.
The UN held an event on Friday to seek international help for IDPs, and Nigeria failed to send a representative.
Let’s give Buhari a break before we begin. The event was organised on the sidelines of the general assembly. But who cares? We’re talking about IDPs here. Buhari was not obliged to attend. But shouldn’t we have sent somebody?
Chad, Niger and Cameroon were in attendance, Reuters reports.
All they wanted to do was appeal for help for the millions of people in the Lake Chad Basin region forced to flee the violence of Boko Haram.
UN aid chief Stephen O’Brien said that is where most people have been displaced by terrorist attacks.
Nigeria, which has the highest number of people displaced by that violence, people who now ravish in poverty and diseases, did not send anyone to the event.
U.S. and European Union diplomats said they were disappointed that Nigeria did not attend the event chaired by O’Brien on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
The Nigerian UN mission was not immediately available to comment on its absence, Reuters is reporting.
“These (IDP) families are being used as ammunition because it is the children that are used as bombers in markets and in train stations,” said Chad’s Foreign Minister Moussa Faki Mahamat.
“Trade is virtually wiped out in this area.”
Several UN diplomats at the event warned that the aid emergency in Lake Chad Basin risked being forgotten amid other humanitarian crises in Syria, Yemen and South Sudan.
It was Nigeria’s chance to get in a voice among the depressing myriad of other pressing global crises. Alas! Nigeria did not show up!
The absence of Africa’s giant, a country whose displaced citizens have actually fled into neighbouring territories thereby compounding their woes, has registered as a big disappointment with the UN.
The UN said some 2.3 million people have been forced from their homes since May 2013, and a quarter of a million of them have fled from Nigeria into Cameroon, Chad and Niger, many walking hundreds of miles.
You would recall that some of these countries serially deport Nigerians who “occupy” their country illegally after being displaced by Boko Haram and other environmental disasters.
“Droughts and floods hit the region repeatedly. Malnutrition and disease outbreaks hover at emergency levels. Some 5.5 million people do not have enough to eat,” O’Brien said.
“The emergence of Boko Haram has pushed them over the edge.” Aha!
Nigeria’s absence did not deter O’Brien and the UN from appealing for help for those displaced people and refugees in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
The United States on Friday announced $6.8 million in funding for regional aid efforts.
Let’s see how much of that gets to Nigeria’s swelling IDPs.
