By Laraba MUREY
The National Commission for Refugees, NCFRMI, has spent well over N1.85 billion managing internally displaced persons, IDPs, in the North East and Bakassi returness since 2018 an analysis of the approved budgets of the commission show.
The NCFRMI’s expenditure, which is under the supervision of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disasters Management and Social Development, covers the period of 2018 – 2021 and captured in the various Appropriation Acts.
The amount would increase this year, as the commission has presidential assent to expend another N200,000,000m for the internally displaced persons and Bakassi returnees.
With the new expenditure approval, implementation of the budget would by the end of the year bring the total sum expended for the survivors of war and other man-made and natural disasters to N2bn.
The 2022 budget expenditure for National Commission for Refugees reads: “ERGP22105916 IDPs Resettlement in Northeast and Bakassi Returnees N200,000,000.”
The huge cost on taxpayers and government revenue for infrastructure development and other social amenities exposed the cost incurred by taxpayers to manage crises that has thrown up these survivors.
These expenses are free of other cost for reintegration, provision of data centers and other empowerment projects for the internally displaced persons the Nigerian government.
The budgets for the years 2018 to 2021 revealed how taxpayers have sustained the resettlement of the IDPs with various amounts.
The 2021 budgets captured it thus: ERGP22105916 IDPs Resettlement in Northeast and Bakassi Returnees N140,000,000.” For 2020, the amended budget expended N156,750,000, for IDP resettlement.
The above figure was inferior to the budget for the same purpose in 2019, as the budgetary allocation dwindled in the last two years but witnessed a rise in 2022 Appropriation Act.
The budget for 2019 captured thus: “ERGP22105916 IDPs Resettlement in Northeast and Bakassi Returnees N856,900,000” was the highest provision invested for this purpose in the last four years and would remain the lone highest expenditure for resettlement of IDPs of the Northeast and the Bakassi returnees.
It is N560.2m which was 56.4% higher than the cumulative expenditure of N140m in 2021 and N157m in 2020 both of which represented 16.3% and 18.3% respectively to the 2019 funding of IDP resettlement.
