The Benue State Emergency Management Agency, SEMA, as well as Civil Society Organisations, CSOs and a group, Benue Youth Forum, BYF, have called on the federal government to shelve its plan to withdraw troops of Operation Whirl Stroke, (OPWS) from the state until it is sure that it is safe for IDPs to go home.
Executive Secretary of SEMA, Mr. Emmanuel Shior stated this while speaking to journalists at SEMA headquarters in Makurdi.
Also, representatives of the CSOs and BYF, Mrs. Josephine Haba and Terence Kuanum respectively, pointed out that the hinterlands were not yet safe for the Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, to return to their homes, hence the need to rescind their plan.
They called on the State Commissioner of Police, CP Garba Mukaddas, and other security chiefs to deploy security personnel to official camps in the state to protect lives and property of IDPs.
The SEMA boss stated that more than 483,000 persons displaced during the farmers/herders crisis were yet to return to their ancestral homes and expressed worry over what he described as negligence by the federal government to ensure the return of the IDPs.
Shior, therefore, urged the federal government to fulfil its earlier plan by releasing the N10 billion it pledged to Benue, Nasarawa and Taraba States as intervention to help rebuild homes destroyed during herders invasion of the various states.
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He noted that failure of the federal government to release the money has put a heavy weight on the Benue State lean resources saying until the federal government come to their aid, the state alone will not be able to resettle the IDPs.
According to him, the state is also battling with Cameroonian refugees that are over 6000 in number, “and it will be unreasonable at this time for the federal government to conceive any thought of withdrawing OPWS.”
Speaking, Mrs. Josephine Haba stated that what is happening in Benue is a clear case of insurgency as in the North East and the move to withdraw men of Operation Whirl Stroke was ill-timed and suspicious.
She said recently in Logo, suspected herdsmen took hostage of women on the farm and collected all the items in their custody, stressing that although no life was lost, a similar incidence in Agatu claimed lives.
Representative of BYF, Terence Kuanum, stated that management of IDPs and refugees remains the responsibility of the federal government according to the international charter on refugees and IDPs.
Mr. Kuanum stated that withdrawing security from the North Central states was a ploy to dump foreigners on the people without any form of resistance and appealed to government to rescind its decision.
