Daystar Christian Centre, Lagos on Tuesday donated N10 million to the United Nations High Commission for Refugee, UNHCR to assist in catering for the needs of Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs in Nigeria.
Handing over the cheque to officials of the Agency in Lagos, the Senior Pastor of the Church, Pastor Sam Adeyemi said the gesture was in line with the mission of the Church aimed at significantly reducing the sufferings of those displaced.
Adeyemi urged the church community in the country to emulate the gesture by bringing succour to those affected.
“We just like to say first to the church community that people’s problems are actually our own opportunities to bring the power of God and the resources at our disposal to meet those tactical needs, that is why the church exist, so we want to say to the Church community, this is another dimension to the problems Jesus called us to solve, their needs are dire, they’ve experienced trauma, they need therapy and we want to ask the church community, let’s step in,” he said.
The UNHCR’s Country Representative to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Antonio Jose Canhandula, who painted a vivid picture of the trauma and sufferings being experienced by the IDPs, described the gesture by the Daystar Christian Centre as a message of “human solidarity”
He explained that the donation would go a long way in helping those in need and appealed to other philanthropic organizations to assist the agency by donating material possessions, including blankets and tents to accommodate the IDPs and urged the relevant authorities to check the issues of herdsmen in the middle-belt before it deteriorated further.
“That space needs to be watched, that space needs to be dealt with, devoid of all the politics it involved and it is because of the politics that we are actually staying away,” Cahandula said.
Pastor Sam Adeyemi presents N10 million cheque to UNHCR’s representative, Cahandula
He disclosed that 112,000 Nigerian refugees were in Niger republic, 10,000 others in Chad, while another 94,000 Nigerians refugees were in Cameroun.
Cahandula also disclosed that 2.8 million Nigerians were also internally displaced within the country, explained that those displaced were mostly people from Bornu, Adamawa and Yobe States who had been forced to flee their homes because of violence, conflicts or persecution.
Head of UNHCR’s Private Sector Partnerships in Africa, Needa Jehu-Mazou said there were lots of deprivation in our spaces.
She stated that Daystar Christian Centre was the first church to throw its weight behind UNHCR in its bid to salvage the plight of IDPs in Nigeria and refugees.
