Terrorism in Nigeria appears not to have an end. the virus spreads across the country like a wild fire thereby leaving a scar on the human race. It is difficult to comprehend why people are killed and displaced from their homes. It is more shocking to know why a solution hasn’t been found despite the billions earmarked for security in past budgets. In this light, News reaching ViewPointNigeria indicates that a new group of persons displaced from the Northeast as a result of the activities of Boko Haram has just been discovered in Jos. Apart from the one that has been camping at a school hostel at Zawan Commercial College Bukuru since 2014, another group has been found camping in a village in Bassa Local Government Area the state.

In the Bassa camp, the inmates are mainly children who became orphans when Boko Haram invaded their communities and killed their parents. These children numbering over 200, according to investigation, were brought from some of the displaced camps in Maiduguri.

A source disclosed that the children were brought from their camps in Borno to enable them have Christian education.

Meanwhile, the displaced and orphaned children in Bassa camp, Jos, are under the care of a non-governmental organisation known as Youths With a Mission, City of Refuge Centre, Miango, Bassa LGA. The NGO was founded 12 years ago by a couple, Mr. Michael Kurams and his wife Joy, to help the less privileged.

Mr. Kurams said, “Our attention was drawn to the plight of these children at the IDPs camp in Maiduguri and even some that are not in camp in Adamawa, so we went out to fish for such groups of orphans, some of them, their parents brought them voluntarily to enable them access formal education. At the moment we have about 200 of such children in the camp and we have organised formal education for them. We have employed a few teachers to teach them, but there are some youths that have come to do voluntary jobs here to educate the children because my NGO cannot pay to employ enough teachers.

The founder said, “We started the school for them in October last year in whatever way we can hoping that one day government will come to their aid. But even though no government has come to our aid, this particular woman got the information of this camp and visited last year and promised to bring some help to us. Today she has come to make some donations for the food and education of these children. She is God-sent, I don’t know how she got to know we are here, she came on her own. Maybe because she is a mother, she has shown a lot of concern for these children, I hope other Nigerian will emulate her and come to the aid of these orphans,” he said.

The woman in question, Eunice Ayisa Sambo, a Good Samaritan, is a native of Jos East Local Government Area of Plateau State. Mrs Sambo, an All Peoples Congress (APC) stalwart, who resides mostly abroad, involved an international NGO based in the United Kingdom to help the orphans at the Bassa camp when she discovered that they were brought from the Northeast.

The APC stalwart said, “My decision to bring help for these children should not be mistaken as a political campaign because these children are not even from Plateau state, neither are they from my constituency, a time will come when they will return to their original state of origin, so I’m just doing this out of compassion, as a mother I can’t have the knowledge of these kinds of orphans and pretend I don’t know, they are vulnerable, they need help, they have lost their parents, who will cater for their needs. So all these thoughts moved me into coming with the little I can do to help, they are my children, if I’m rich enough I would have adopted all of them and kept them in my house, but I can’t. But I know I am a trustee in an NGO that can help, hence I went back to U.K, and this is how they decided to help these children with this token donation.

While presenting the donations to the camp manager, Mrs Sambo said, “On behalf of myself, a trustee of and co-founder of Amazing Grace Charitable Trust, UK and founder of Jos Wallgate Foundation Nigeria, we make this visit to internally displaced persons including women and children from Borno state domicile in Jos Plateau state. The situation in the North Eastern part of Nigeria over in the past and present has affected lots of communities and forcing inhabitants of affected communities into unimaginable traumatic experiences.

Items donated during the visit includes; 10 bags of maize, 10 bags of locally-milled rice, 9 bags of beans. The donation also includes the cash sum of N240,000.00 (Two Hundred and Forty Thousand Naira) for the payment of two teachers to be employed for the education of the children for the period of one year begging from January 2017.

count | 270

Boko Haram: New IDPs Camp Discovered in Jos