FG plans establishment of missing persons’ centres in Borno, Rivers, Benue

AS Nigeria joined other countries of the world to celebrate the International Day of the Disappeared yesterday, the Federal Government disclosed it’s plan to establish centres for missing persons in three geopolitical zones of the country.

Speaking at an event organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in Abuja to mark the day, the Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Social Investment, Mrs Maryam Uwais, said the National Technical Committee on the Establishment and Management of a Database of Missing Persons, would setup its pilot centres in Benue, Borno and Rivers as part of a national project to tackle the huge crisis of missing persons.

Uwais who is also the chairperson of the database committee, re-assured Nigerians that every life matters, saying that, “the database will serve as a platform for family members or friends of missing persons to engage with and document necessary information about their loved ones.”

Uwais, in her speech said huge numbers of Nigerians have gone missing as a result of insurgency in the North Eastern part of the country, armed conflicts, natural disaster, abduction, trafficking and other means.

She said, it is in the quest to have the data of persons missing that her committee was established last year to, among other things, establish the necessary components for the oversight, implementation and management of the database.

While addressing journalists at the end of a photo exhibition to depict the agony of families of missing persons, the Executive Secretary of the National Human Rights Commission, Mrs Oti Ovrawah, disclosed that “there are cases of enforced disappearance with countless numbers of citizens who are allegedly in the custody of law enforcement agencies or the military, unaccounted for.

“It is in the light of these that the commission has thrown its weight behind the call by the Vice President to establish a database of missing persons,” she said and called on the Federal Government to expedite action on the establishment of the missing persons’ database.

Ovrawah lamented that, “The void created by the missing is more agonising as they have not been confirmed dead and the thought of not knowing what they may be going through makes the pain more overpowering.”

Earlier, the ICRC’s Head of Delegation Mr Eloi Fillion disclosed that over ten thousand persons are missing in Nigeria.

According to him, “Together with the Red Cross societies in neighbouring countries, the ICRC is searching for 10,480 persons, most of them children. This year alone, over 4,000 tracing requests have been made to the Red Cross family by persons seeking information about the fate of missing relatives.”

Fillion regretted that adequate measures to prevent disappearances and provide vital information on missing persons have not been taken by the Nigerian government in the recent conflicts in the country.

According to him, ICRC is supporting the Nigerian Government in addressing the issue of the missing persons and the rights of their families, adding that, “establishing the fate of the missing is and should be first and foremost seen as a humanitarian prerogative.”

The International Day of the Disappeared is marked every August 30.

 Tribune.