•SEMA boss explains why he can’t carry out Ortom’s directive to close camps
By Peter Duru, Makurdi
Mr. Emmanuel Shior is the Executive Secretary of Benue State Emergency Management Agency, SEMA. In this interview he spoke on why over 480,000 persons displaced by herdsmen crisis in the state are still trapped in IDPs camps, efforts to get them back to their ancestral homes, the implication of failure of the federal government to release the sum of N10billion to resettle victims of herdsmen crisis in the country, the looming flood disaster in Benue and lots more. Excerpt:
Heading an agency like SEMA is not an easy task, so how has it been since you took over the reins of affairs there?
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Managing emergencies or disasters is a herculean task and even when you are managing people who are not in trouble, you will agree with me that that is difficult. It becomes really, really difficult to manage them. But even as it is difficult two things have happened that eased my work. The first one is that the Almighty God himself is with me and that agrees with my name Emmanuel. In Tiv my tribe, they say that the name you bear has a way of shaping your life either positively or negatively. That is what I believe.
But in this case it is positive shaping because it is God’s name. God is known as Emmanuel. So He has been with me and helping me. And then the best thing to have happened to me is to work with a governor that is very simple. The Governor’s paradigm is God centered. He places God first before any other thing. And so I work directly under him, I report directly to him and I connect directly with him. So that has helped me so much to humble myself to accept that I am here to serve the people of Benue state.
He appointed me to change the narrative of the agency and sanitize the place. So that has challenged me, that has humbled me. I have not forgotten the charge he gave me, he said that if you go to the office operate openly. Always work with the media. You will agree with me that since I came here I have been partnering the media to ensure transparency in whatever we are doing. Whenever we want to distribute – relief materials to IDPs – I don’t do it alone, I call the media and we do it together. That is why you have not heard of any scandal about diversion of relief materials from here.
So that has helped us and other humanitarian actors and partners who are working with us to know that we are worthy partners and are dependable and whatever is in our trust or in my care as the head of the agency will be executed effectively.
I don’t want to believe that there are no challenges in the agency. What are the challenges Benue SEMA is facing?
Well, literature has taught me that life has two sides. The good and the bad sides. Surely we have the bad side. The bad side is essentially in two areas, capacity and funding.
You know that for SEMA to be more proactive, rapid and more effective in responding to humanitarian issues in the state, there is need for more funding. At the moment our funding comes from local governments. They send monthly contributions to help us with the daily running of the place.
And when we have projects we also write to the Governor to make available or to approve resources for us to carry them out. At the moment that is not enough, so that usually impedes the speed we want to respond to humanitarian issues.
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Again that of capacity, there is need for capacity building at the agency. There is need for training, beginning with myself. I have not been trained as a humanitarian worker or disaster manger. The only thing that has kept me is my vast knowledge of literature and also my university training and orientation. All of that have taught me to be flexible to survive and to be adaptable to whatever situation that I find myself. And so with that I have been able to manage myself very well and manage the agency but there is need for training and retraining of myself and staff both within and outside the country to be able to be abreast with modern practices of managing disasters.
Closely connected to training is the equipment or tools with which to manage the agency with. If you look at other SEMAs, for instance you have Lagos as LEMA, if you see their equipment you will marvel. They have caterpillars, they have heavy duty trucks, bulldozers and others. When disasters such as building collapse occur in Lagos, you see them moving in with their equipment and all that they need to help rescue people. Also, when fire occurs you see them coming out with fire fighting equipment. We have non of that in our agency at the moment. But the good news is that the Governor, with the support of Benue State Assembly, is planing to equip this place after the training that I earlier talked about.
That would re-position the agency and we will be able to respond more rapidly and effectively to humanitarian issues that are happening in the state.
Let’s look at the issue of IDPs, for quite some time now they’ve been in the camps and so many persons have been agitating that it’s time for them to go back to their ancestral homes. What is the situation with IDPs in the state?
The situation with the IDPs in the state is that some of them are actually in what we call government official camps, then there are others who even out-numbered those that are in the camps who are in the host communities. As much as government is relentless in providing succour to alleviate their suffering, they have always cried out to the government that there is no place like home.
We have done enough to take care of them but they want to return to their homes.
So what is stopping that?
What is stopping that for now is simply the fact that some of our hinterlands are not safe even up till now. Herdsmen have occupied those places and are grazing their cattle freely. Like where I come from in Guma local government area, my village,Tse Torshima, if you go there you’ll see herdsmen, they are there. Non of our people have returned back to that place. Some of them are in the IDPs camps and some of them are living with friends or relations and in the IDPs camps host communities.
So it’s a big problem but recently the Governor directed me to put in place a plan to disengage them. You are talking about population more than 480.000. And you know that as a humanitarian agency or workers we cannot just disengage the IDPs, close the camps and ask them to go home without putting in place a livelihood plan for them especially where they have lost their lands and homes. We need to recapitalize them. We need, as a responsible and responsive government to build their homes because if you close their camps now and ask them to go back, where are you asking them to go back to?
That is why it is difficult for government to ask the IDPs to leave the camps on account of insecurity and the fact that there is need to rebuild their homes, repair places or put in place some structures that you’ll ask them to go back to. When that is in place, you can say, okay your homes have been destroyed, you don’t have any homes to go back to, but you can leave the camps and go back to so and so locations. That is why I’m using this platform to cry out to President Muhammadu Buhari because the president came here through the Vice President and promised that N10billion was earmarked for states that were ravaged and destroyed during armed herdsmen attacks.
Since Benue should be a major beneficiary of that intervention we are hoping that if part of that money comes and the reconstruction of houses and the resettlement of the IDPs is put in place then Benue state government can now carry out the remaining part of the plan to disengage them which will involve perhaps getting them food that will take them for some time, getting them farming implements, improved seedlings and all of that. But at the moment Benue state government cannot shoulder all of that. Putting together this arrangement for their livelihood and also for the reconstruction of their homes is a huge task that the state government alone cannot undertake or handle.
At the peak of the crisis when the camps were opened the state government, through your offices, fed the IDPs daily, who takes care of their daily sustenance at the moment?
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The state government has continued to do that through my agency. Just last week the Governor supplied truck load of rice to this agency and we immediately commenced distribution in the presence of the media at the flag off of the distribution.
After that, we have commenced the distribution of other food items to the various camps and we started with Logo local government area where we have Ugba and Anyiin IDPs camps. We continued with Naka in Gwer West local government area where we have IDPs camps. We also continued with Gbajimba, Daudu and the rest of others. And as I said before, we have not limited the support and intervention we are giving to IDPs only to the ones in the camps. Occasionally we extend that support to the IDPs outside the camps. For instance, in Gbajimba you have the IDPs in official camps and then you have others who are in other locations. The intervention that I have sent to Gbajimba is going to reach them also. We have the same situation in Naka, same situation in Abagena, you have the same situation in Daudu and same in other places. And our intervention is not limited to food, we have continued to provide non food items also such as mosquito nets, clothing and others. We have also provided medical care for the IDPs and we have continued to do that up till this moment. We are distributing drugs to the clinics at the IDPs camps. We have support from WHO, Doctors Without Borders are also supporting in this regard, the International Committee of the Red Cross are also supporting us.
So with this support that is coming from other humanitarian actors also, it has been possible for us to sustain the support we are providing for the IDPs.
How do you ensure that relief materials get down to the real IDPs?
This is an important question no doubt, when spirited individuals and my agency give support, we want that support to be used directly by the victims. So to ensure that that is achieved we have working tools that help us. One of them is data. We have the data of all the IDPs in the camps. Another tool is to give them identification cards. They have cards. Cards are distributed on the basis of households. And so the relief intervention that we give is given on the basis of households. So that way it is easy for us to ensure that what is given to the IDPs is taken directly to them.
In 2012 Benue witnessed the most challenging humanitarian crisis after Lagdo dam in Cameroon was opened. How prepared is SEMA to tackle same challenge if the dam is opened this year?
Well, even before the rains started in earnest, our Governor as a responsible and responsive Governor which is what drives his administration summoned me and the agency and other line Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, including Ministry of Water Resources, that of Information, BEWASA, BESESA and others to come together and brainstorm and get prepared since flooding has come to be a perennial challenge in Benue.
So as a government that is responsive, we don’t have to wait for flood or any other challenge to come before we start to prepare and to respond. So since he gave that charge, we came together and formed a committee and went to work. This is not the first time a committee of that nature is in place. Last year he directed us to form a similar committee and we did. And so when he directed us this time around, all we needed to do was to activate our contingency plan and we have started with the first leg of the contingency plan which is sensitization.
We have started sensitization, the aim is to enlighten the Benue public about the flooding that is being expected. We are reminding them that it may reoccur this rainy season also. We have worked with the public on sanitation days and other days to free the gutters and water channels. We have tried to talk to people to leave their houses that are on water channels because some of them built their houses without getting permission or clearance from the Ministry of Lands. The Urban Development Board also has put in place a plan to demolish some of the structures and free the water channels so that the running water will be able to move freely and not run off its course and cause flooding. So we are hoping that it will also help.
Vanguard