The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said that the one million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Bauchi camps are not from Jos North alone but from various crisis-ridden states.
“According to the Agency, the one million IDPs represented the number of displaced people from crises-ridden States of Borno, Kaduna, Yobe, Plateau and Bauchi over the years.”
Some registers date back to as far back as 2001, NEMA spokesman Yushau Shuaib, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Jos yesterday.
Shuaib who was reacting to criticisms to a statement by NEMA DG, Sani Sidi, that IDP camps in Bauchi were hosting one million people.
The critics had rejected the figures, with many particularly critical of claims that the IDPs fled from Jos North Local Government Area because of the protracted violence in Jos.
Rev. King Bamidele, Chairman, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Plateau North chapter, in his reaction to the report, he said that it was “simply not true that the one million people could be from Jos North.”
“The figure is non-existent; the total population of Plateau is put at 3.1 million. The whole of Jos North has less than one million people. So that figure was “just willfully fabricated for selfish purposes,”he said.
Shuaib blamed the “mix-up” on a “representation by one newspaper out of the eight that covered the NEMA boss’ visit to Bauchi, saying that the misrepresentation did not put the facts and figures in their proper context.