Is government stealing food from IDPs in Benue?

A Premium Times story detailing how Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Benue are being robbed of food supplies and relief materials, is sobering. It leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

As Benue got submerged in August of 2017, most persons fled homes with only the clothes on their backs; to camps for the displaced.

On September 6, 2017, a presidential jet with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo onboard, touched down at the Makurdi airstrip, with hopes for a suffering people and victims of a most disastrous flood.

Deceiving the presidency

However, people were hired into the camps to swell the number in order to deceive the federal government delegation.

Premium Times writes that; “before the VP’s plane touched down, some totally full 30-seater buses conveying Makurdi residents, reportedly drove in to top up its capacity. The motive was to give the visitors the impression of a camp in crisis mode,

“People from areas like Gboko road and Warata where little water entered their houses and nothing happened to them, were paid to get on about three coaster buses and come to camp,” said a witness, a nonprofit volunteer in the camp who asked not to be named for fear of being victimised by the authorities. “I don’t know if the governor was involved or it was just his PR people alone, but it happened.”

Osinbajo announced eight trucks of relief materials in the interim and promised an additional five for victims.

Diversion

Soon after the VP left Benue, relief materials meant for the displaced, began making their way out of camps It was a diversion of epic proportions.

“Five vehicles including two Toyota Hilux trucks and an 18-seater bus loaded to the brim with relief materials from the store were navigating out of the camp premises. United Nations volunteer staff who tried to stop the convoy, were rough-handled by hoodlums allegedly colluding with SEMA staff”.

The rest of the story reads like a sick movie—displaced persons are handed meager rations of Indomie, they are left to starve, a journalist who reports how food supplies are being diverted from camps is arrested and cowed into silence and on and on it goes.

Inhumane

It’s a chilling, gripping tale of man’s inhumanity to man; if ever there was one.

While SEMA boss Boniface Ortese sternly denied that his agency was diverting food supplies from the camps, the Benue State government is yet to respond to the story.

It should.

There have been reports of NGOs and humanitarian agencies stealing from IDPs across Nigeria. This story is yet one more example. It is heart-rending that people still steal from the less privileged and the suffering in Nigeria.

This really shouldn’t be happening.