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More than 6,000 people in the past week have fled the northeast Nigerian state of Borno due to Boko Haram violence, the nation’s main relief agency said.
On Wednesday, The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said that it had registered exactly 6,227 internally displaced people (IDP) in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno, the past week. “Most of them came in the last four days, following the escalation of the crisis and threats”, said Abdulkadir Ibrahim, spokesman for the northeast division of NEMA. People from the Gwozo district in Borno were among the people who had abandoned their homes and seek refuge in Maiduguri. Militant fighters last week attacked four villages in Gwozo, killing several hundreds.
The total number of IDPs is expected to increase, as several others had escaped to the neighboring state of Adamawa or across international borders to Cameroon.Asabe Vilita, a local government leader in Gwozo and Borno’s commissioner for commerce and investment, on Monday said that 1,290 people had fled Gwozo, and many of them had come to Maiduguri.
The numbers demonstrates the clear impact of the violence on civilians in Borno. NEMA had previously given a warning about the growing humanitarian crisis in the region.
Ibrahim has said that mosquito nets, blankets, food and bedding will be provided for the people who had fled the region; he added that his organization was working with its partners, including the Red Cross to help them. Last week, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) said that the Boko Haram violence was forcing around 800 people every day to abandon their homes. It also said that over 3,000 people have died since May 2013, when a state of emergency was imposed on the states of Adamawa, Yobe and Borno for around 10 months. Over 250,000 people have abandoned their homes during the same time period, it added.
