From Umar Danladi Ado, Sokoto
The Danish Refugee Council, an International support donor agency has intensified efforts to work in synergy with critical stakeholders toward transforming Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), in Sokoto and Zamfara states in Northwest, Nigeria.
To actualise that, already the council has declared a commitment toward more support and result-oriented advocacy to reposition by empowering the internally displaced person situation in the two states and the region in general.
The Council Coordinator, Samson Peter Ayok stated this at a workshop in Sokoto on Thursday and pointed out that DRC observed with concern that Northwest Nigeria has suffered a lack of attention amidst the growing number of IDPs as a result of insecurity and other natural occurrences hence displacing a lot of inhabitants and households.
He commended the strategic role and efforts of the Sokoto state government reaching out to various donor agencies for support to vulnerable displaced persons across the state.
DRC is operating and providing intervention and support services in thematic areas across 40 countries of the world.
It focuses more on economic recovery, protection, shelter, settlement, peacebuilding and humanitarian support among other critical human needs in times of displacement.
“We are focusing on Sokoto and Zamfara states to offer rapid response to situations of displacements.
“We are building on our approach strategy by encouraging better partnerships that will further drive our objectives for success”, he explained.
Ayok said DRC was operating in the two regions of Northeast and Northwest across four states; Adamawa, Borno, Sokoto and Zamfara states with the vision and mission to promote dignified life for all displaced refugees.
“We equally assist and protect them from harm and safeguarding their legal rights as well empowering them towards better future”,
The Council was pushing to encourage synergy with other socio, religious, and cultural organs such as CSOs, the media, opinion and community leaders to adequately respond to displacement situations in Zamfara and Sokoto states respectively within the one-year project.
This, he explained, was aimed at further providing the space to appreciably localise all strategies as well as work with other critical national organisations ( NGOs) to strengthen capacity for adequate response to situations.
“This will assist in speedy identification of crises, locations and affected victims or persons for quick implementation of the designed package as intervention”, he said.
Contributing, the Executive Director, of ASATTAHIR Foundation International, Professor Tanko Yahaya Baba said the foundation had since inception in 2011, positioned its activities on IDPs in health, food and nutrition projects by providing emergency interventions, especially at informal centres for displaced persons in Zamfara and Sokoto states.
“We are working basically on general system strategy and capacity building to reach out to crisis locations with intervention”, he said.
The foundation has provided intervention support across the two states. We visited Kauran Namoda, Bodinga, Tangaza, Binji and some areas in Sokoto ( Ramin Kura). All these are informal IDP centres.
“We supported over 2,000 vulnerable displaced households. You can only do this with comprehensive information and data collection,” he observed.
He noted that the government alone cannot accomplish the task of executing its programmes without the support of NGOs and other key players.
Professor Baba who noted that there were no formal IDP centres, also observed that most of the locations housing IDPs had no basic social facilities and were not officially designated and had an attendant explosive magnitude of displaced persons.