The Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) group on Monday said sexual abuse of female Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) by security operatives and camp officials have been swept under the carpet.
The group said this during a street procession in Abuja to mark the 1,000th day of the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls.
In a statement read by a member, Bukky Shonibare, the group asked the Federal Government to stop treating IDPs as second class citizens.
The group said, “IDPs are dying of hunger and starvation. There are hardly any records of the scores of the IDPs in and around Abuja and all over the nation. The lot of those in government-controlled camps is not any different.
“There have been confirmed reports of sexual molestation of the IDPs by the military and police personnel. The authorities claimed that some have been apprehended for these acts and will be duly punished, but the matter has subsequently been swept under the carpet.”
The group also said the Borno State Ministry of Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Resettlement was doing “an abysmally poor job.”
It added, “Their focus in the so-called rehabilitation has been the commercial properties of politically-connected persons as against looking out for the downtrodden and vulnerable to lift them up back to a normal life.”
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