President Muhammadu Buhari Monday assured the international community that
his administration was already implementing several people-oriented
programmes to meet the humanitarian needs of the over two million
internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Nigeria.
The President, who disclosed this at the High-Level Summit on “Addressing
Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants” on the margins of the 71st
Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA71) in New York,
United States, said such intervention programmes include: the Presidential
Intervention Committee on Rehabilitation of the North-East; the Victims
Support Fund; the Safe Schools Initiative and the proposed North-East
Development Commission currently undergoing legislative process.
President Buhari added that, “we are making concerted efforts to meet our
citizens’ immediate humanitarian needs by reducing their risk and
vulnerability and increasing their resilience through vocational training
and skills acquisition programmes, particularly for IDPs in camps.”
The President said any discourse on refugees and migrants in the case of
Nigeria, “will be incomplete without reference to our internally displaced
persons, victims of Boko Haram’s terrible atrocities,” which also rendered
600,000 persons homeless in Nigeria’s neighbouring countries.
He noted that in order to find a lasting solution to this regional
challenge, Nigeria in collaboration with the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees, recently hosted a regional conference on
displacement of persons within the framework of Regional Protection
Dialogue on the Lake Chad Basin.
At the global level, President Buhari said Nigeria has equally shown
appreciable concern on issues of global human mobility using such control
instruments as the National Migration Policy; Labour Migration Policy;
Trafficking in Persons Prohibition Laws, and Nigeria Immigration and
National Drug Law Enforcement Acts.
The Nigerian leader condemned all new forms of racism, xenophobia and hate
ideology targeted at “undermining the considerable benefits that migration
can deliver to global efficiency.” He said such divisive tendencies only
lead to violence and avoidable loss of lives in a world that requires
cooperation, adding that “globalization should mean free movement of
goods, services and people.”
Nigeria, he said, “believes that without deliberate and collective
commitment and action, the issue of large movement of refugees and
migrants may impede our aspirations toward achieving the Programme of
Action of the Cairo Agenda +20 and global determination to leave no one
behind in the implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs).”