By Joshua Egbodo
Abuja
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, has commended President Muhammadu Buhari for allocating N5 billion to cater for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the 2015 proposed supplementary budget currently being considered by the National Assembly.
Dogara dropped the commendation yesterday while delivering a keynote address at the opening ceremony of a workshop organised to sensitise members of the House on the role of the parliament in addressing the challenges of IDPs in Nigeria, explaining that available statistics revealed that about 68 per cent of the nation’s IDPs were children.
According to the Speaker, who used the opportunity to call on President Buhari to transmit a Bill which would domesticate the Kampala convention and other IDPs related ones, there have been no comprehensive legal instruments to address the challenges of the IDPs.
He said: “Apart from domesticating the Kampala Convention, all legal and institutional structures with respect to rehabilitation and assistance of IDPs needs to be re-organised for better coordination. In this regard, the National Commission for Refugees Act, which is now known as National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons, needs further amendment.
“Notwithstanding the fact that the Commission has been formally designated by the Federal Government to cover matters relating to Internally Displaced Persons and coordination of Migration and Development, this designation requires the backing of law in order to further strengthen the Commission to discharge its mandate.”
Earlier, in his welcome remarks, the chairman of the House Committee on IDPs, Refugees and North East Initiative, Hon. Sani Zoro, recalled that Nigeria currently has over two million IDPs scattered across different camps, faced with “substandard facilities, most of whom are women and orphaned children, with hunger and malnutrition as the common denominators that define their lives.”
While describing the sufferings across the camps as “unimaginable,” the lawmaker noted that legal and institutional frameworks targeted at addressing the challenges of IDPs had been in limbo, adding that the day’s was a step forward.
