Legislators Uncover Illegal Sales of Humanitarian Items in North-East
The House of Representative Committee on IDPs, Refugee and North East Initiative wishes to express sadness over yesterday’s protest by Internally Displaced Persons(IDPs) at Teachers Village camp in Maiduguri, and the needless resort to use of tear gas to disperse them by the police.
It is on record that the authorities concermed have continued to deprive the starving and desperate IDPs of food and non food items whose everyday complaints, pleas, and outcries only fell on the deaf ears of insensitive officials charged with thier care, sadly, massive consignments of these food and non food items precured with state ressources are now either at varying stages of expiration or are being shared (in the open) to highly placed politicians for use as campaign tools in tur countdown to our general election.
Evidence also abound of the age-old diversion and illegal sale of humaniterian assistance items in the open market. This is evil at its best, reprehensible ans unacceptable to all men ans women of conscience.
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The Committee urges the Federal Government to act as a matter of supreme urgency by ensuring immediate supply of the desperatelt needed items without furthur delay and purnish the perpetrators and beneficiaries of the inhumane crime. As part of its oversight founctions, the committee is willing and ready to share vital information capable of fishing out the culprits no matter how highly placed.
The Committee further notes with satisfaction the commitment of the Independent Electoral Commission(INEC), at protecting the civil and political rights of the IDPs by guaranteeing thier participation in thr upcoming national elections.
However we wish to implore the Electoral Management body to not the latest displacement situation in parts pf Borno and Adamawa states that have swelled up the already overcrowded camps in Maiduguri alone by 300,000 IDPs while 32,000 others have crossed over to Cameroon, between Mid-December 2018 and 31 January, 2019.
Because of the excalation of the conflict recently witnessed in the Northeast and North-West regions leading to instability and forced displacement on massive scale, the Committee urges the INEC to consider allowing registered IDPs to be allowed to vote whatever they so find themselves, instead of being restricted to voting in thier original pollinh units which are now unsafe for vuluntsry return, such flexibility should be extended to affected victims in Zamfara, Katsina and any other state(s).
Signed
Muhammed Sani Zorro
