President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development to investigate and report the circumstances leading to a fire incident at Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp in Borno State.
\nThe President gave the directive in a condolence message by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, in Abuja on Thursday.
\nHe described the incident which led to the death of 14 persons and many sustained injuries as \u201cextremely horrifying.\u201d
\nWhile directing that urgently needed assistance be immediately given to the victims, President Buhari also asked the ministry to advise on how to avert future occurrence.
\nHe prayed to almighty God to repose the souls of those whose lives were lost, and the quick recovery of the injured persons.
\nNo fewer than 14 persons were burnt to death with 1,250 shelters destroyed in the fire outbreak in the camp in Ngala Local Government Area of Borno State.
\nRep. Zainab Gimba, representing Bama\/Ngala\/Kalabalge constituency in Borno, made this disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Maiduguri on Thursday.
\nGimba said that 15 persons sustained various degrees of injuries, while property including food stuffs were destroyed by the Thursday inferno.
\nShe said that dozens of households in the camps were displaced during the fire outbreak which gutted almost half of the shelters at the camp.
\nThe lawmaker said that the incident had further compounded the plight of the IDPs.
\n\u201cI wish to sincerely sympathize with the victims of today\u2019s fire disaster..
\n\u201cI am deeply shocked and touched. For those that lost their loved ones, please accept my heartfelt condolences, for those that sustained injuries, I wish them quick recovery.
\n\u201cI am also mindful of the fact that the next few weeks will be difficult because it is not easy to be an IDP and homeless at the same time, but very soon Insha Allah, I will send relief materials to cushion the hardships,\u201d she said.
\nGimba appealed to the Northeast Development Commission (NEDC), State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), NEMA, and UN Humanitarian organisation to come to the aid of the displaced victims.
\nWhen contacted, Hajiya Yabawa Kolo, Chairperson of SEMA, described the incident as \u201cunfortunate\u201d noting that it came at a time when the state was faced with another humanitarian challenges of preventing COVID-19.
\nKolo said that a team of the agency would conduct on the spot assessment to ascertain level of damages incurred as a result of the fire incident with a view to providing immediate humanitarian support to the affected victims.
\nShe said that the agency would adopt proactive modalities to prevent future recurrence of the incident.
\nNAN recalled that a similar incident occurred in less than 24 hours when fire destroyed 700 shelters and rendered thousands of IDPs homeless at a camp in Mafa local government area in the state.
\nReports by NAN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development to investigate and report the circumstances leading to a fire incident at Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp in Borno State. The President gave the directive in a condolence message by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":23478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[31,1408,1487],"class_list":["post-25937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-buhari","tag-idps","tag-ngala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}