Missing 71 Trailers Of Rice For Adamawa IDPs Should Be Probed

Controversies have trailed the sudden disappearance of 71
trailers of rice and other grains allocated to Internally
Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Adamawa State by the Federal
Government to ameliorate the hardship faced by victims of
insurgency in the state.
The Guardian gathered that the 71 trailer loads of grains
actually arrived the state only for the items to develop
wings two days after the Deputy Governor, Mr. Martins
Babale, flagged off the ceremony marking the distribution of
the consignment, without getting to the IDP camps or to
those that had returned home.
Commenting on the missing trucks of food items, a
member of the State House of Assembly, Mr. Emmanuel
Tsamdu, said reports from his constituency community
leaders confirmed that only 250 bags of 50kg of rice got to
Madagali, as against the two trailers of 600 bags of 50kg
per one trailer load.
Tsamdu urged the Federal Government to immediately set
up a committee to investigate what he described as the
worse crime against humanity and corrupt behaviour.
Details of the planned distribution listed the seven local
government councils in the northern part of the state,
which were the worst hit by the Boko Haram attack, as
beneficiaries of the highest allocation.
But checks by The Guardian revealed that Madagali local
council, that was the worse hit due to its closeness to
Sambisa forest, was allocated only two trailers of rice.
When contacted the District Head of Guluk, headquarters of
Madagali council, Mr. Bello Ichadi, disclosed that only five
district heads of the council received 50 bags of 25kg rice,
making a total of 250bags for the entire Madagali council.
It was also discovered that while the rice and other grains
were packaged in 50kg bags, the few bags given to the
Madagali Chiefs were in 25kg bags, indicating that there
was rebagging of the grains by those charged with the
distribution.
Executive Secretary of the state Emergency Management
Agency, Mr. Haruna Furo, told The Guardian that his
agency, which is in charged of managing IDPs in the state
was not involved in the distribution of the grains from the
Federal Government to the state.
His words: “I cannot tell exactly what went wrong with the
distribution, because we are the agency that is charged
with the responsibilities of taking care of IDPs. But we
were not involved in recent exercise, it was done in Abuja;
even the sharing formular. Many people are calling my
office, bringing complaints, but the only thing we can say is
we are not part of the exercise, so we don’t know how the
distribution was done and the formular that was used.”