Borno State Governor, Prof. Babagana Zulum; has yesterday banned all
visitors to over a dozen Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps
across the state.
According to him, visitors’ restrictions, was an adopted strategy of
state government contains outbreaks of global deadly COVID-19 that
claimed over 15,000 lives.
Disclosing the ban Tuesday in Maiduguri, the state capital, he said
the IDPs and their camps are vulnerable and at high risk of
contracting the virus; if such measures were not taken.
“This move was part of administration’s strategy to containing the
outbreak of the virus in IDP camps and other parts of state,” he said.
The Governor had also last week appointed his Deputy, Umar Kadafur to
chair a high powered multi-stakeholder response team.
The team comprises agencies of the United Nations led by World Health
Organization (WHO) and State’s Ministries of health, education,
transport, information, local governments, religious affairs and
humanitarian affairs agencies
The latest move; which was ban on IDP camps was announced by
Chairperson of the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), Hajiya
Yabawa Kolo who is also a member of COVID-19 response team.
She said that the decision to ban visitors to camps was taken during a
meeting with 51 IDP camp managers on Monday.
According to her, the state took the decision as one of the strategies
to prevent the importation of the virus at into camps.
“This measure becomes necessary as some of the neighbouring countries
of Chad, Niger and Cameroon have cases of COVID-19.
While lamenting on porous borders, Yabawa said: “Despite the closure
of land borders by the neighbouring countries, there was still influx
of IDPs into the state.”
She therefore; directed all camp managers from Gambouru/Ngala,
Damasak, Kala/Balge, Banki, Bama and Monguno not to accept IDPs from
any of the neighbouring countries into their camps.
Continued: “We know we have a lot of threat around us following
sighting of suspected cases of the virus in Cameroon and Chad and we
have some border towns very close to those countries.
“We do not want to go to the issue of response because even in
developed countries, it was difficult for them to contain this
pandemic.
“At our own level, we are positioning ourselves to see how best we can
stop the virus from transmitting in the state” she noted.”
E
