BOKO HARAM INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS TO RETURN HOME BY 2016-Buhari

According to the deadline the armed forces were given to wipe out Boko Haram by Dec 31, President Muhammadu Buhari has told a former British Foreign Minister David Miliband that millions of displaced persons from their homes by Boko Haram would proceed back home 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 Boko Haram six-year insurgency, which led to the death of as many as 17,000 people and internally displaced more than 2 million, out of whom 10% are living in governmen camps. 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.