The Secretary-General of the Council, Jan Egeland, made this known while presenting the report on situation of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), in Maiduguri.

The report titled “Not Ready to Return” was compiled in collaboration with Danish Refugee Council and Protection Cluster Nigeria.

He said the IDPs were still concerned about security in their communities, reconstructing their destroyed homes and finding means of livelihood when they return home.

Egeland said that 3, 400 households were interviewed during the study at various IDP camps and host communities in 12 local government areas of Borno.

He explained that the study indicated that more than 80 per cent of those interviewed were unwilling to return home in the immediate future due to security concerns.

“The findings of the report are indisputable, when 86 per cent of people tell us they are not ready to go home yet, we must listen, and this cannot fall on deaf ears.

“Today, I met a woman in Monguno , who fled her village two years ago after Boko Haram set it ablaze. She is eager to bring her six children home, but she told me it is too soon, that the armed group are still present.

“People must decide to return of their own free will, coercing communities to move home is a deadly recipe set to worsen the conflict.

“While the end game is for communities to return home, the unfortunate truth is that pushing people back now will have harmful consequences.

“An overwhelming 85 per cent of people living in formal camps tell us they feel safer there than where they were before, despite the deplorable attacks on camps.

“Even, if the security situation improves, half of the displaced persons interviewed say their houses were destroyed in the conflict.

“Forty eight per cent of them do not have information about the current state of their homes, indicating that this figure could be much higher,” he said.

Egeland noted that while the military gained successes in the fight against the Boko Haram insurgents, the armed group resorted to attacks on soft targets, including markets and sites sheltering displaced persons.

The NCR secretary-general added that the report recommended certain measures needed before the displaced persons could go home, including overall improvement of security in rural communities.

He said that resources must be channelled into rebuilding homes and re-establishing livelihoods adding that it is important to involve the displaced persons in developing these programmes.

“People need a roof over their heads and the prospect of making a living, if they are to have any chance of rebuilding their lives.

“We are ready to work with the government to help displaced Nigerian’s return home. But movements must be voluntary, safe and informed”.

The Federal Government in collaboration with Borno Government had already embarked on massive reconstruction and rehabilitation of communities liberated from Boko Haram insurgents.

The projects were designed to fast-track reconstitution of civil authorities, provide shelter, education, health, water supply, and facilitate resettlement and alternative means of livelihoods to the displaced persons.

The government had so far resettled communities in Dikwa, Askira, Damasak, Konduga and Monguno among others.

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The world’s youngest nation has been mired in civil war since 2013, when President Salva Kiir fired his deputy Riek Machar, sparking a conflict that has increasingly split the country along ethnic lines.

Last month, the United Nations declared that parts of the country are experiencing famine, the first time the world has faced such a catastrophe in six years.

Nearly half the population, or about 5.5 million people, is expected to lack a reliable source of food by July.

Despite the catastrophe, Juba will now charge $10,000 for foreigners working in a “professional” capacity, $2,000 for “blue collar” employees and $1,000 for “casual workers” from March 1, the labour ministry said in a decree.

Edmund Yakani, executive director of the local charity Community Empowerment for Progress Organizations (CEPO), said the move aimed to reduce the number of humanitarian workers.

“Actually, the work permit is too expensive for humanitarian workers, since over 90 percent of the foreigners seeking to work in South Sudan are humanitarian workers”, he told Reuters.

Aid groups say they often face restrictions in South Sudan. In December, Juba expelled the country director of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) after security agents held him without charge for more than 24 hours.

The U.N. defines famine as when at least a fifth of the households in a region face extreme food shortages, acute malnutrition rates exceed 30 percent, and two or more people in every 10,000 are dying each day.

The fighting has uprooted more than 3 million people. Continuing displacement presents “heightened risks of prolonged (food) underproduction into 2018,” the United Nations said in a report last month.

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Only eight of 126 registered agencies in Borno state were there to genuinely help, Governor Kashim Shettima said.

He criticised the UN children’s agency (Unicef) for buying bullet-proof cars, saying he did not use such vehicles.

Last month, the UN launched a $1bn (£825,000) appeal for those facing hunger and starvation in the region.

The UN said that nearly 5.1 million people in three north-eastern states were expected to face serious food shortages as for a third year in a row farmers had been unable to plant, fearing unexploded improvised devices left behind by militants.

Urgent aid was needed for some 100,000 people, mostly children, at risk of dying of starvation.

The military has recaptured much of the land controlled by Boko Haram in 2014, but thousands of people who fled their homes are still living in camps.

Governor Shettima did single out some aid agencies that were doing a good job such as the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Organization for Migration, the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Danish Refugee Council.
But those agencies only there to profit “from the agony of our people” should leave, he said.

According to the Associated Press news agency, Shettima made the comments on Tuesday night to MPs and journalists at the state legislature in Borno’s main city of Maiduguri.

In some ways the Borno governor’s gripe may be legitimate. In the last six months his city of Maiduguri has been transformed. Whereas before it was rare to see foreign aid workers, now the tiny airport in Maiduguri is full of staff from non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

It is a struggle to get a booking in the city’s few hotels and armoured vehicles – each costing about $500,000 – are visible all around. The UN in particular has a policy of using them, many other NGOs do not. But they have reason – last July a UN convoy returning from a camp in rural Borno was attacked by Boko Haram fighters; Unicef staff survived direct gunfire thanks to their armoured vehicle.

It is not the first time the UN has been criticised for wasting money, but the idea that Unicef is profiting from the crisis is probably a step too far. It is involved in various nutrition programmes in camps around Borno state that are undoubtedly contributing to feeding the thousands at risk of starving to death.

The governor accused some agencies of concentrating too much on the camps for those displaced by the conflict.

“We are in the post-conflict phase of insurgency era where we are concentrating on recovery, reconstruction and rehabilitation. But the foreign NGOs have near fixation on the IDP camps,” Nigeria’s Premium Times newspaper quotes him as saying.

“We hardly know what the UN agencies are doing. We only see them in some white flashy bullet-proof jeeps; apart from that, we hardly see their visible impacts.”

The governor said he hoped the camps would be closed by the end of May this year, according to Nigeria’s Leadership newspaper.

Last month, Nigeria’s President Muhammdu Buhari accused the UN and aid agencies of deliberately exaggerating the humanitarian crisis and whipping up “a non-existent fear of mass starvation” to get more funds.
Unicef has not yet commented on Mr Shettima’s remarks.

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