Return of IDPs to begin next year, says Buhari

Following the December deadline to flush out insurgency, President Muhammadu Buhari has told a  former British Foreign Minister David Miliband that the millions of persons displaced from their homes by Boko Haram would start the process of returning in 2016, just as the National Christian Elders Forum expressed concern over recurring orgy of violence and destruction that seem to define the northern region of Nigeria.

The militant group’s ongoing six-year insurgency, which has spread from northeastern Nigeria to neighboring countries, has killed at least 17,000 people and internally displaced more than two million, 10 per cent of whom live in government-run camps, AFP reported. A September report by UNICEF said that 500,000 children had been uprooted and forced to flee their homes in the previous five months alone.
Buhari has set a deadline of the end of December for the Nigerian Army to retake all territory currently held by Boko Haram, which has been forced back into its Sambisa Forest stronghold in the northeastern Borno State. After a meeting with the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian aid agency headed up by Miliband, the President said that efforts to return the internally displaced persons (IDPs) to their homes would begin “in earnest” in 2016.