Benue State government, in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), has provided over 2,000 boreholes in eight local councils of the state.
Outgoing UNICEF Chief Field Officer in Nigeria, Dr. Ibrahim Conteh, disclosed, yesterday, at the Benue Peoples House during a farewell visit to Governor Samuel Ortom, that the feat was achieved in four years.
Conteh stated that the intervention was to give the most deprived communities access to potable water, which could save residents, especially children and women, from contracting water-borne diseases.
The UNICEF officer, who has been transferred to Afghanistan, stated that the UN agency had gone a step further to connect the boreholes to primary health centres and primary schools in the communities, assuring that they would also rehabilitate the boreholes.
UNICEF has also spent about $1 million to provide temporary learning centres in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps across the state, as well as partnered the state’s Ministry of Education to ensure that children were enrolled in schools.
He commended Ortom for always providing the needed counterpart funding to make UNICEF’s work easier, as well as consistently feeding the IDPs to ensure that children living in the camps were not malnourished.
On his part, Ortom expressed appreciation to UNICEF for assisting the state through various interventions and assured that apart from the counterpart funding, his government would ensure that facilities provided by the UN Agency are well managed.
He lamented unequal treatment of Benue IDPs compared to what happens in the North East, stressing that the development was against justice, fairness and equity.
