IDPs Holds Rally in Abuja to Celebrate Return to Ancestral Homes
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPS) who were hitherto housed in Kuchigoro camp and other camps in the nation’s capital on Friday held a rally to thank President, Muhammadu Buhari and the Nigerian Army for liberating their villages from the grips of the Boko Haram insurgents.
Last week, no fewer than 2,000 persons displaced from North-east as a result of the Boko Haram insurgents returned to their ancestral homes from Abuja and environs where they had been living for years.
Speaking on behalf of the former IDPs, Mrs. Maryam Nuhu, called on the relevant authorities to fish out those who have been sponsoring the Boko Haram sect that had made the country volatile, while also saluting the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai for his tenacity, to make sure IDPs can return home.
She recalled: “For years we were displaced persons in our own country, at the Kuchigoro IDPs camp and other annexes in Abuja and neighboring states. The measure of comfort and care provided us almost made us to resign to calling these camps home. But even if we had been quartered in the most glamourous of the hotels in the nation’s capital, the affinity for our ancestral lands would have still pulled us to return home as it did now.
“The only thing that would have kept us away from our home is the terror attacks of Boko Haram that uprooted us in the first place. However, Boko Haram has become history as far as we are concerned. Whatever the terror group is capable of right now is no different from the kind of criminality that can occur on the streets of any of the world’s many towns and cities.
“Our towns and villages have been cleared of these terrorists. We can now confidently return home to pick up our lives from the points where we will meet them. Of course the scars of our losses are there but they are scars that will remind us of the healing that sincere leadership can bring as opposed to the dark side of humanity that Boko Haram its backers want us to know.