Insurgency: Buni seeks increased humanitarian, reconstruction support from UN, others
Governor Mai Mala Buni of Yobe State has appealed to the United Nations and other donor agencies to step up their support and humanitarian interventions to accelerate resettlement and reconstruction effort in the state.
Buni made the appeal yesterday at the United Nations Building in Abuja at an event tagged ‘Holding On’ to mark ten years of Boko Haram insurgency.
He said with the relative improvement in the security situation across the state, he hoped the development partners would come in more forcefully and continue to support the government’s post-conflict initiatives.
“The displacement of people from their communities also affects their capacity to engage in meaningful economic activity, including farming. This, in turn, has worsened a food security situation that clearly pre-dated Boko Haram”, he said.
According to Buni, reconstruction and resettlement “are clearly the most challenging for us in Yobe State, given the enormity of the devastation to our infrastructure and our capacity for service delivery” and urged the UN and its agencies as well as other donor organisations to do more to help the process.
The UN Resident Humanitarian Coordinator, Edward Kallon said the event was organised to “honour the souls whose lives have been claimed by this crisis… (and to express our) grave concern for the hundreds of thousands of people who are still trapped in areas we cannot reach to provide them urgent lifesaving humanitarian assistance they so desperately need”.