‘IDPs’ mentality needs to be changed’

The mentality of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) needs to be changed.

This was the submission of John Okocha during the One-Day Consultative/Media Parley On Advancing IDP Issues organized by Journalists For Christ (JFC) in conjunction with the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) and Brot fur die Welt.

The parley held at Ogba, Lagos on Tuesday, December 21, 2020, and Okocha who was one of the speakers due to his extensive interactions with IDPs in the north of Nigeria, commenced his session by relating the first two images that struck him in the north when he first went there to work with IDPs.

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According to him, the two images which he’ll never forget were of a 12-year-old girl who could easily disassemble and reassemble an AK-47 rifle and another little girl who was carrying her little brother and they fell asleep by the roadside.

He then continued that the mentality of IDPs hasn’t changed and it has to be changed but how do you change the mentality of a child who sees his father killed or mother raped severally, he questioned?

Working on the mindset of IDPs is therefore their most paramount need, he concluded.