A former Presidential Adviser, Senator Florence Ita-Giwa, on Tuesday urged the Federal Government to urgently probe the distribution of relief materials to Internally Displaced Persons across the country.
Ita-Giwa gave this charge against the backdrop of Saturday’s recovery of multi-million naira relief materials in the resident of a politician in Calabar, Cross River State.
The National Refugee Commission had in April 2017 given 268 bags of cement, 400 bundles of roofing sheets, over 800 assorted woods, 95 bags of rice, 50 bags of beans, 70 bags of 50kg garri, drugs and other materials to Bakassi refugees in response to a fire outbreak in Day Spring Island which destroyed their makeshift houses.
The items were handed over to the Cross River State Emergency Management Agencies for onward distribution to the affected refugees but they found their way to the homes of individuals who were already selling the items.
In a petition to the Department of State Service and the Nigeria Police, Ita-Giwa lamented that relief materials no longer get to their destination.
She said, “This incident is an eye opener and I believe it has been happening for a long time. With this discovery now, I am calling on the Federal Government to investigate the mode of distribution of relief materials to IDPs all over the nation, not just Cross River State.
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| SEN. FLORENCE ITA-GIWA |
“Because maybe most of those things they claim they have been sending to those people end up in the markets. This is an example.
Government would be wasting money, thinking that they are rehabilitating people, thinking they are intervening, whereas those things are not getting to the people. So they must be investigated.”
She charged Governor Ben Ayade to immediately to address the problem of distribution of the relief materials to the refugee, adding that the development was an embarrassment to the state.
“I would be very shocked if the governor of this state, who has been crying for Bakassi people, and I want to believe that those tears are real tears if he does not act immediately on this report, because it is an embarrassment for a man that preaches sympathy for the underprivileged.
“A man that says that from his own background, he knows how it feels like to be trampled upon. He has openly been shedding tears for Bakassi. So, I would be very surprised if the governor does not do something urgently for a people, whose relief materials were sold in the market,” he said.
Ita-Giwa stressed the need for a proper resettlement of the people of Bakassi in Dayspring Island as this would check such developments as the diversion of materials.
According to her revisiting the judgment of the International Court of Justice to reclaim the ceded Bakassi was an exercise in futility.
She also said it was inappropriate to relocate the Bakassi people to an existing Akpabuyo Local Government Area, adding that the proper thing was to resettle them in Dayspring, a virgin area of their choice which suits the fishing lifestyle of the people.
By Mudiaga Affe, Calabar PUNCH NEWSPAPER
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