Gov Samuel Ortom has decried the ‘deplorable conditions’ of the camps hosting people displaced by the incessant attacks on Benue rural communities, and called for urgent measures to address the situation.
“The camps are terrible; the living conditions there are nauseating. Something urgent must be done to assist the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs),” Ortom said on Thursday.
Ortom spoke in Makurdi when he received members of the Sir Ahmadu Bello Foundation, led by is chairman, Babangda Aliyu, at the Banquet hall of the Benue People’s House, Makurdi.
He said that 60 per cent of the IDPs were children who had missed examinations and did not know when to return to school.
” The facilities at the camps are inadequate and too deplorable to provide minimum comfort for these children.
“The attacks keep going on and more people are fleeing their homes and taking refuge in the camps, making them overcrowded.
“In spite of the presence of “Exercise Cat Race”, herders are still killing and displacing local farmers from their ancestral homes.
“The Benue people are law abiding and have refrained from resorting to violence even at the height of provocation, but we cannot continue like this,” he said.
He called on members of the foundation to appeal to the federal government to pursue justice for his people.
“All we ask of the federal government is justice, the rule of law and an end to impunity. We have suffered too much in the hands of the herders who carry out these attacks against our people with impunity.