BOKO HARAM: SARAKI SEEKS FOREIGN ASSISTANCE TO REBUILD NORTH-EAST

The President of the Nigerian Senate, Senator Abubakar Bukola Saraki, yesterday solicited the assistance of the international community for the on-going efforts by the Federal Government to end insurgency in the North-eastern part of the country and, thereafter, rebuild the region and rehabilitate its people.
Saraki made the call at separate sessions he had with the German Ambassador to Nigeria, Michael Zenner and his Spanish counterpart, Alfonso Barnudo Sabastian De Erice, who paid courtesy visits to him in Abuja.
In a press statement issued by his media office, Saraki pointed out that alleviating the humanitarian situation and level of destruction in the region would require urgent and global support across the world.
Saraki said, having led a delegation of the Senate to visit the IDPs camps in Maiduguri on Monday for an on-the-spot assessment, it had become clear that the Federal Government alone can hardly foot the bills for total rehabilitation of the people and rebuilding of infrastructure damaged as a result of the activities of the insurgents.
“As you talked about insecurity, particularly the insurgency in the North-east, it is a problem that we alone cannot tackle. A couple of days ago, some of us were there in the region, in Borno State, to see the effects on the entire community, particularly the internally displaced persons. I think that it is clear that a large part of the North-east is in need of reconstruction and rehabilitation from long-term funding,” Saraki said.
Meanwhile the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, has reassured Nigerians that the Senate will take all necessary legislative steps to moblise resources for the reconstruction of the Northeastern region of the country and the resettlement of internally displaced persons, IDPs, in the region.
Senator Ekweremadu gave the assurances when he led a delegation of the Senate to visit IDPs’ camps in Adamawa State yesterday.
Ekweremadu stressed that the region’s problems had wider negative impacts on every part of Nigeria and, therefore, must be collectively addressed as a Nigerian problem.
According to a statement issued by his Ekweremadu’s special adviser on media, Uche Anichukwu, the delegation was in Adamawa to see the saddening living conditions of the people they represent, stressing that the delegation had “gone round and have noted with deep sadness the magnitude of destruction and human suffering engendered by insurgency in the North East part of our country”.