The National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons has put the number of refugees in Nigeria at 3.2 million with only 84, 803 registered officially.
Beyond this, only 17,334 are ready to return home.
The Commission gave these statistics on Thursday, noting that it has begun the construction of five resettlement cities for use by displaced persons in the country.
The Federal Commissioner, Imaan Suleiman-Ibrahim disclosed this in the State House, Abuja, when she was featured on the weekly ministerial briefing organized by the Presidential Communications Team.
She listed Borno, Kano, Katsina, Zamfara, Nasarawa and Edo as the states already designated for the pilot phase of the project.
Recall that the trend of refugees and displaced persons littering the country has been heightened by insecurity, especially in the northern part of Nigeria.
While the government has made several interventions to remedy the situation, most of the displaced persons usually renege in returning to their original placeS of abode.
All this comes just as the Borno State Governor, Babagana Zulum has taken steps to close a majority of the IDP camps in his state and made several welfare programmes to ameliorate the suffering of the people.
Since 2015, the dreaded terrorist group Boko Haram has held many local government areas in Borno State hostage hoisting their flags in such places.
Their supremacy in the state had forced many residents to flee their homes, thus increasing the IDPs astronomically.
Suleiman-Ibrahim while reacting to the development said, “When displacements happen; flood, communal clashes, people lose their homes and means of livelihood. So, we started a pilot phase of our project resettlement in 2020. The project resettlement city will entail building small cities because Persons of Concern (PoCs) have three options of doable solutions.
“They can either locally integrate, resettle or they can go back to their homes but sometimes they are unable to go back home and that is why there is a need for the building of new communities or strengthening the capacity of their host communities.
“We are in the third phase of our resettlement city project but the pilot phase is in Borno, Kano, Katsina, Zamfara, Nasarawa and Edo States. Most of them are now at between 70-90 percent completion but that of Edo State is about to take off.”