No fewer than 300 births were recorded in Fufore Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp hosting Nigerians evacuated from Republic of Cameroon.
Mr Terry Igue, the camp manager and an official of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), said on Saturday that the births were recorded in the past two years.
He told a joint delegation of ECOWAS Parliament and UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) who were on tour of IDPs camps and areas affected by insurgency in Adamawa.
Igue said the camp was opened in 2015 with an initial population of over 5,000 people mostly from Borno, but reduced to 1,790 victims of insurgency following the evacuation of some of the IDPs to Borno.
He said the camp, which has a clinic, recorded over 300 successful delivery, adding that referral cases from the camp to other tertiary health centres in Yola used to be handled by an international organisation, the International Rescue.
He said the organisation had left creating a vacuum on healthcare delivery in the camp.
Igue said that the camp had 252 tents and a school run by the Nigerian Army Education Corp.
He said the camp authorities had stopped cooking for the IDPs and instead give respective families in the camp bags of assorted grains including rice, soya beans, masa vita and maize on monthly basis to prepare their own food.
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“Here we supply the IDPs with dry ratio on monthly basis,” Igue said.
Representatives of the IDPs, including Malam Amsami Goni, Mrs Safaratu Ayuba and Mr Emmanuel Gajau, who spoke at the occasion lauded government and other stakeholders for their support to the camp.
They, however, appealed for clothes, detergents, mattresses and condiments for soup for the IDPs.
“We also want intervention in the area of secondary education for our children.
“Any child going to secondary school need about N20,000; as IDPs where can we get such amount to sponsor our children to secondary school? We want government and organisations like you to look into this,” Goni said.
In their respective remarks, the leader of ECOWAS Parliament, Mr Sadiq Ibrahim, and that of UNHCR, Mr Rogers Hollo, said they were on a joint mission to interact with the IDPs for on-the-spot assessment of their problems for broader solution.
They said the mission would visit other affected states and countries within the ECOWAS for such assessment.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the team visited returnee communities in Madagali and Michika Local Government Areas as well as IDP camps and settlements in Fufore and Malkohi, all in Adamawa.
(NAN)
