The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Tuesday restated its commitment to the protection of Forcibly Displaced Persons (FDPS) and refugees in the country, saying it would do this with enhanced robust information/data collection and advocacy programmes.
NHRC’s executive secretary, Tony Ojukwu, stated this in Calabar, Tuesday, during a 2-day Inception/Orientation Training of Task Teams on the 2025 NHRC/UNHCR Project on Protection of Forcibly Displaced Persons for the South South states, organised by the Commission in collaboration with United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
Ojukwu, who was represented by his Special Assistant/Head, Monitoring Department of the Commission, Okay Benedict Agu, said the project was for “a three-year duration aimed at enhancing the promotion and protection of human rights of IDPs, Asylum-seekers, Refugees and Returnees in Nigeria.”
He stated that the project, implemented in 11 sates of Adamawa, Borno, Yobe, Taraba, Katsina, Kano, Sokoto, Zamfara, Cross Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Benue, was supported by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees.
The executive secretary further described the protection of FDPR as respecting the rights of such individuals “in accordance with the letter and spirit of relevant bodies of laws, namely national human rights laws, international human rights laws and refugees’ laws.”
While disclosing that there were about 39,000 Cameroon refugees, spread across Taraba, Benue, Cross River and Akwa Ibom states of Nigeria, he charged participants to note that “data collection, under this project, must be guided by Human Rights-Based Approach, emphasizing the importance of the principles of human rights monitoring.”