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About 10,000 returnee Internally Displaced Persons have been given various agricultural produce to kick-start farming in their resettled communities across the 25 Local Government Areas of the state as a way of providing food and economic security to them after spending so many years depending on handouts from donors in the camps.
The various agricultural products which include cassava, maize seedlings, cashew nuts, sorghum among many other seedlings are meant to serve as stabilising factors for the former IDPs as they prepare to start life afresh.
Speaking on Monday in Maiduguri, the chairman Borno Agric Village, Amb. Allamin Lawan, said the agricultural produce were donated by various ministries, agencies and donors after the state government ordered the stoppage of food distribution to the former IDPs.
“When the state government announced that NGOs should stop giving food aid to returning communities, we in agric village immediately mobilised and reached out to agencies and donors on the how to make these vulnerable people secured in terms of food. We came up with the idea of providing seedlings to them so they can farm and sustain themselves.
“To the glory of God, we were able to distribute 13 trucks of cassava tubers to one thousand farmers, beans, okro, onions, maize and rice seedlings to eight thousand villagers including widows and young adults. We distributed these items across the 25 LGAs where people are occupying with the exception of Abadam and Guzamala LGAs which have no human existence there,” Allamin disclosed.
He said animals like cows, chicks, fingerlings were also distributed to two hundred and fifty persons to boost their socioeconomic life in the communities.
“All these items were sources from agencies like FOA, ICRC higher institutions and agencies operating agricultural activities. We pleaded with them to assist the poor rural dwellers to resettle in their communities since the government ordered the stoppage of food distribution to them.
With what we have distributed, they can now begin to engage in both irrigation farming as well as rainy season farming which will provide food supply as well as generate source of income to them,” Allamin Lawan concluded.
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