Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno State has ordered the immediate closure of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in Bama, the largest displacement camp outside Maiduguri.
Zulum made the announcement on Thursday in Gwoza after inspecting the Government Secondary School IDP camp.
He also announced that the Gwoza IDO camp would also be shut in the coming weeks.
The governor said the Bama camp would cease operations following the completion of the profiling and screening of displaced persons.
“We visited Bama yesterday to supervise the screening of IDPs, and by noon, Bama IDP camp will be closed.
“Today we are here in Gwoza. We have profiled all of them, and Insha Allah, in the next two or three weeks this camp will also be closed,” the governor said.
Zulum attributed the decision to the improved security situation in many communities previously affected by the Boko Haram insurgency, noting that thousands of displaced residents had already been successfully resettled.
He said the state government had, over the past seven years, resettled displaced families in communities including Darajamal, Nguro Soye, Goniri, Banki, Abbaram, Ngoshe, Kirawa, Warabe and several other locations across Borno.
The governor, however, expressed concern over increasing criminal activities within some IDP camps, warning that the facilities had become vulnerable to infiltration by criminal elements.
“In our camps now, there is ongoing criminality; we have identified all of them, and they’ll be resettled based on their localities and to their community heads. Otherwise, Boko Haram/ISWAP are gradually infiltrating the camps,” he said.
Zulum also described what he described as the growing trend of residents abandoning their homes to return to camps in order to access humanitarian assistance from non-governmental organizations.
He said the screening exercise uncovered a significant number of persons posing as internally displaced persons, stressing that the government could no longer sustain such camps under those circumstances.
According to him, many households currently occupying the Gwoza camp are residents of the town who had previously returned home but later moved back to the camp.
“One year ago, this was almost a ghost camp with not more than about 400 households. It is surprising that about 3,000 households are back in the camp, and most of them are residents living within the town,” he said.
The governor added that additional IDP camps across the state would be closed before the end of his administration as part of efforts to complete the resettlement programme and promote sustainable recovery.
(The Whistler)