EVEREST AMAEFULE
Boko Haram attacks claimed 32,570 lives in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno State in the North-East of Nigeria within a period of eight years, the United Nations Development Programme has said.
The UNDP said this in its 2018 National Human Development Report – Achieving Human Development in North-East Nigeria – which was released in Abuja on Friday night.
It also indicated that 1,687,703 people were displaced in the three states between 2009 and 2016.
According to the report on casualties resulting from the terrorist attacks covering 2009 to 2016, the highest casualty in a year – 5,350 – was recorded in the three states in 2016.
The report showed that the terror group became more deadly as the number of casualties progressed consistently with each passing year: 2009 (2,320 deaths), 2010 (3,000); 2011 (3,560), 2012 (3,700), 2013 (4,420), 2014 (5,000); 2015 (5,220) and 2016 (5,350).
It added that more than 600 teachers were among those that had been killed, while 547 schools were damaged or destroyed and 19,000 teachers fled their bases.The report said, “According to the Nigerian Security Tracker, there were 1,044 incidences of terror attacks by Boko Haram in the North-East region between 2009 and 2016, with diverse methods of attack in use.
“These included armed bombing and explosions, midnight/terror attacks, mass murder /suicide raid, assassinations/murder and abductions.
“Although the actual numbers of casualties are often hard to come by, the estimated number of fatalities based on the Nigerian Security Tracker is further corroborated by a field survey conducted in 2017.”
The report said the insurgence, which had produced 1,687,703 IDPs as of 2016, had impacts on practically all aspects of livelihood, including the emergence of food insecurity, a malnutrition crisis, crisis in the health and education sectors, as well as water, sanitation and hygiene crises.
In a forward to the report, the Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, said the task of reconstruction would be one of the most important and urgent agendas in the policy and programmes of the Federal Government under ex President Muhammadu Buhari.