Food insecurity can worsen Boko Haram insurgency in Borno — Gov Zulum

Gov Zulum

Borno Governor, Babagana Umara Zulum has disclosed that food insecurity can worsen Boko Haram insurgency in the State.

Zulum disclosed this at Monguno town while distributing food and items to the most vulnerable victims of Boko Haram insurgency on Wednesday.

Zulum noted that distributing food and items to IDPs and the vulnerable people in Borno is a child of necessity because 80% of those that were resettled back to their ancestral homes are farmers and now they have no access to their farmlands, hunger and poverty can make them to join the terror group.

According to him, the state government is facing challenges which include lack of enough funding taking into consideration the quantum of IDPs who received food and other items from the state government due to the loss of their livelihood to the insurgency.

“Monguno Local Government Area is one of the most devastated by the insurgency, 55,000 women yesterday benefited from our nonfood items, each woman received a sum of N5,000 with a wrapper, today we are distributing food items to 44,000 head of households, each head of household will receive 25kg bag of rice and 10kg back of beans.

He commended President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and VP Kashim Shattima, NEDC for providing rice as palliatives, saying “the beans, wrappers and 5,000 to each woman was provided by the state government”.

“The only challenge that I have been facing is lack of funding, it is not easy you have seen the quantum of people that have received the palliatives this morning, it is not sustainable and is beyond the control of the state government.

“It is not easy but we have no option than to do so because we want to rebuild the confidence of the people to stay in their ancestral homes.

“Otherwise those that have no food or something to eat may join ISWAP or Boko Haram because food insecurity is the worst form of insecurity.

He further explained that, the Borno State government is receiving funding support from the federal government, North East Development Commission (NEDC), Customs Service, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) among other agencies but still the state government needs more funding to be able to provide relief materials to the victims of Boko Haram insurgency especially, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

“Since the inception of the Boko Haram in 2009, close to 4m people were displaced, now we are gradually resettling people back to their ancestral homes, we have resettled more than 2m people, we will continue to do more in terms of resettling IDPs, so the state government needs more funding to do so.

“We will continue to provide palliative support to IDPs and most vulnerable people in the state until when we completely resettle all the IDPs back their ancestral homes with having access to their farmlands.”

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