By Musdapha Ilo, Maiduguri

Preparatory to fashioning out a rehabilitation plan for the insurgency ravaged North east, the federal government commenced an assessment of the impact of the six year crisis on Monday.

The director, Search and Rescue of the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, Charles Otegbade, disclosed this while on a visit to the deputy governor of Borno State, Zannah Mustapha.

Otegbade who is the head of the federal government’s inter-ministerial committee on the assessment, which comprises staff of the federal ministries of health, education and works, the Red Cross and other non-governmental organisations, said the assessment would inform government’s next actions.

“We are here to assess the level of destructions created by the insurgents and recommend to the Federal Government, so that the needed funds will be provided”.

He also appealed to the Borno state Government to assist them in the assessment assignment, so as to furnish the Federal government with the actual level of destruction to enable the state access the Victims Support Fund,” he stated.

He emphasised the need for NEMA to continue to support the Borno State government, observing that “80 percent of the Borno communities are living in Maiduguri” and that “a chunk of the Federal allocation to the state was spent on maintaining the Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs.”

Otegbade said his team was also in the state to deliver the monthly relief materials from relief agency to the IDPs in the state in line with the promise of the NEMA director general’s has promised to supply relief materials to the state for IDPs every month.

In his response, Mustapha said that a total 22 out of the 27 local government areas in the state were affected by the insurgency and that over 1million IDPs are living in Maiduguri, the state capital, alone.

He observed that although the military had liberated 97 percent of the communities taken over by insurgents in Borno State, it would take time for the government to fumigate and diffuse the landmines before the residents can return to their homes.

The deputy governor appealed to the federal government and NEMA to take over the feeding of the IDPs, disclosing that the state received only N200 million from the Goodluck Jonathan administration, compared to Adamawa State which he said got about N4 billion.