Buhari's Intervention Averted Unimaginable Crisis in N’East, Says Ex-PCNI Chairman

Former Vice Chairman of the defunct Presidential Committee on the North- east Initiative (PCNI), Alhaji Tijani Tunsa, has disclosed that the timely intervention of the presidential initiative has saved Nigeria from an unimaginable humanitarian crisis as a result of the devastating war against insurgents in the North-east zone.

The committee was set up in June 2016 by President Muhammadu Buhari to initiate and coordinate intervention efforts aimed at halting the looming humanitarian crisis in the North-east region.

While inaugurating the committee chaired by General Theophilus Y. Danjuma (rtd), President Buhari said the committee should take a quick look at the conditions of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) and take urgent remedial measures to alleviate the conditions.

Speaking in an interview with journalists at the weekend in Abuja, Tunsa said the PCNI was able to carry out the basic job of coordinating all the humanitarian efforts going into the Northeast by ensuring that most of the displaced persons in the camps returned to their communities after being liberated by the Nigerian military.

As part of the successes recorded in executing its mandate, Tunsa said the committee was able to resettle many of the displaced persons, adding that the IDP camps have now been reduced to about 10 to 15 located mainly in Borno State.

Tunsa said: "As I speak to you, having coordinated the United Nations Committee on Refugees, the UN office of the Commissioner for Refugee Commission and others, the PCNI provided a coordinating role so that you would be able to see the capability of what everyone can do to bring those people back."

In terms of size and magnitude of the humanitarian crisis, Tunsa explained that besides the displaced persons within the conflict areas, there were over 50,000 refugees in Cameroon and a larger number in Niger.

Tunsa, who served as the pioneer National Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), said in the course of delivering on its assignment, the presidential committee discovered that part of the reason the insurgents easily overrun villages and towns in the North-east areas was that the people usually live in small neighbourhood clusters spread far apart from one another.

He said most times when these insurgents plan their operations; they usually identify the sparsely populated communities as easy targets, which they attack, burn houses, kill the men and abduct women and their children.

According to him, apart from money voted by the federal government, most of the materials used in the humanitarian intervention efforts came from the victim support fund and the world food programme.

Tunsa said even though there are some areas that are still contentious, generally, peace has returned to states like Adamawa, Yobe and a lot of other parts of the North, and people are beginning to go back to their villages.