Around midnight on Sunday, Governor Babagana Umara Zulum showed up at Mohammed Goni College of Islamic Legal Studies (MOGOCOLIS), in Maiduguri, where some Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Abadam Local Government Area of Borno were being camped.
Upon arrival, Zulum immediately sealed the entrance and supervised a headcount to identify actual IDPs, in order to put a stop to rampant cases of dubious residents pretending to be displaced.
These shady individuals spend their day time at IDP camps to share food meant for IDPs, and towards the night, they return to their homes to sleep, with some of them benefiting from other means through which the state distributes food to vulnerable non IDPs in communities.
Governor Zulum’s mission at the camp which ended at about past 1am, led to the discovery that out of 1,000 households in the records of humanitarian officials, 650 households were ghosts (non-existent).
About 450 households were found to be real IDPs after Zulum’s midnight headcount which was conducted by the governor alongside an official of the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, Air Commodore M. T. Abdullahi, and two commissioners (Agriculture, and Local Government and Emirate Affairs).
In the humanitarian system, a household normally consists of at least six persons who are either related through families or chosen to stay together for the purpose of receiving household aids.
Officials who were part of the midnight headcount said Governor Zulum was not aversed to approving support for any citizen who may be vulnerably in need of food since there is a committee doing that, however, the governor is vehemently opposed to some residents making dubious claims in other to take what is meant for IDPs while also benefiting from other existing welfare activities that target non IDPs.
