Gwoza IDPs Protest Evacuation From Public Schools

Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Gwoza Council Area of Borno State are protesting their evacuation from public schools within the capital city where they have found temporary shelter for more than a year.

The State Government had shut down public schools within Maiduguri to accommodate the displaced persons sacked from 20 local government areas in the heat of Boko Haram insurgents attacks.

Evacuation of the displaced persons to alternative makeshift camps is part of government’s plans to reopen public schools.

The closure of public schools in the district has seen over eight thousand school age children forced out of their classes.

The Chairman of the State Emergency Management Agency, Ahmed Satomi, said that 700 tents had already been constructed at the Bakassi camp to house the IDPS from Monguno and Gwoza Local Government Areas.

Mr Satomi said that the Yerwa Secondary School and Women Teachers’ College among others, had already been evacuated. Some IDPs from Gwoza Local Council had been occupying the Government College Maiduguri.

A Borno Senator, Shehu Garbai, recently said that most local government areas in the state were partially occupied by the terrorists.

Mr Garbai claimed that out of the 12 local wards in Gwoza, six were still under the control of Boko Haram. This is contrary to claims by the Minister of Information, Mr Lai Mohammed, in December that Boko Haram insurgents had been sufficiently decimated and could no longer take away any territory from Nigerians.

The outlawed Boko Haram had overran Gwoza late 2014 in a bloody attack while in March 2015, the Nigerian military announced the liberation of Gwoza.