We’re not leaving destroyed communities, Dalori residents tell Buhari

District Head of Dalori, Alhaji Usman Lawan Dalorima and residents have informed President Muhammadu Buhari and Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State that no amount of threat or threats from Boko Haram insurgents will compel them to desert their community and become refugees in any of the settlement camps in Maiduguri.

They insisted that despite the calamity that befell them last Saturday where over 150 persons were reported killed and their houses destroyed by insurgents, they would rather stay back in their ancestral land and face whatever consequences that might arise. Dalori is about 10 kilometres drive from Maiduguri metropolis, which already has about 30 designated Camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) of not less than 1.3 million people.

The residents including the Borno State Chairman of the All Progressive Congress, APC, Alhaji Ali Bukar Dalori made their position known at the destroyed palace of the District Head when President Buhari, who was represented by the Secretary to the Federal Government, Mr. Babachir David Lawal, alongside three ministers on a condolence visit to Dalori village of Konduga Local Government Area of Borno State.

The residents who also kicked against the ongoing digging of trenches to surround the community by military to safeguard them from another infiltration by Boko Haram sect from the Sambisa forest, called on the government particularly National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, to provide them with food items and rebuild their destroyed houses instead of digging trenches by escavators in the name of security measures.

Speaking on behalf of the residents, the APC chairman said “We are grateful for the visit to sympathize and condole with us over the unfortunate attack last Saturday, but we are appealing to government to stop the ongoing digging of trenches surrounding our community, because these trenches will prevent our people whenever there is an attack to flee as an escape route in the community. We are not going anywhere, this is our land and we have no other place than Dalori, we are not against deployment of security personnel to this community, but my people are strongly against surrounding them with trenches”.

Responding, the SGF said, they were in Dalori on behalf of President Buhari who was on official foreign trip at the time of the attack, and prayed God to grant eternal rest to those who lost their lives in the attacks and wished the injured quick recovery.

He assured that the Federal Government under President Buhari was committed to ending the activities of insurgency in the north east, and directed NEMA to immediately deploy relief materials to the people of the community to cushion their hardship. The SGF in company of Ministers of States for Health, Foreign Affairs and Power Mr. Osagie Ehanire, Mrs. Khadija Abba Ibrahim, and Hon. Mustapha Shehuri as well as the Deputy Governor Usman Mamman Durkwa, service chiefs among others.