Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno State has faulted exaggerated figures used in the report of the abducted Internally Displaced Persons in ISS Gamborun Ngala, Borno State, who were abducted by ISWAP terrorists when they went to fetch Firewood.
Zulum stated this when he met a team of North East Ambassadors group, in Maiduguri on Thursday.
Several media organizations have reported contradicting figures since the incident happened; some said 319 were kidnapped without quoting any sources to back their claims, some quoted 100 while some foreign media quoted 200 as the figures of the abducted victims without quoting any verifiable sources.
Responding to the incident, Governor Zulum urged those reporting the incident to be careful as “Nobody could be able to ascertain the number of the abducted persons’ ‘. As the Chief Security Officer of the state, I am yet to receive any official figure on the abduction in Gamborun Ngala. So we must be very careful of making unverifiable predictions.
“What you heard a few days ago in Gamboru Ngala is about recruitment. They lost their members and their numbers have depleted and they are now looking for new recruits and women.
“We are yet to ascertain the correct numbers of the abducted victims. Some may have decided to go voluntarily. And that’s what I am afraid of. If people decided to go to the bush voluntarily, you cannot do anything to stop them.that has been my fear since.
“Reliably, I was informed that some of the women were returning to the bush willingly. Even in Mafa, I went a few days ago and I saw a group of 200 women who said they wanted to go to the bush.
They said they are in the camp and they are not getting anything. We went and calmed them. This also underscores the fact that there is hunger in the IDPs. We therefore needed your support especially at the local government levels where we have resettled our people.
We needed to provide them with durable and sustainable livelihood. We needed to move away from the immediate solutions to medium and long time durable solutions. Because once we don’t take care of the IDPs, we will be at a risk of them returning back to the fighters in the forest.
We have heard situations where they are calling them from the bush and mocking them that they are suffering. Even when their colleagues who surrendered asked them to come out they always asked them what has the government done for them,”he said.
He explained that no fewer than 162,000 insurgents and their family members have surrendered under the Borno State Model. He said that this was the first time in the world that such numbers of ex-fighters laid down their arms through the exit program of the state government.
THE OBSERVERSTIMES , understands that State Emergency Management Agency, the Camp Officials at Gamborun Ngala, and the Nigerian Army in Gamborun Ngala, confirmed that there was abduction of some women but could not escorting their numbers.