Zulum uncovers 650 ghost families in Borno IDP registers

Borno State Governor, Prof. Babagana Zulum, has discovered 650 ghost households during a surprised midnight visit to an internally displaced persons’ camp in Maiduguri.

The governor had around midnight on Sunday showed up at Mohammed Goni College of Islamic Legal Studies in Maiduguri, where IDPs from Abadam Local Government Area of northern Borno were being camped.

According to a statement by the governor’s Spokesman, Mallam Isa Gusau, the governor on arrival at the camp immediately closed 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.

The ghost IDPs were accused of spending day times at IDP camps to share food meant for IDPs, and towards the night, returned to their homes to sleep, even as they are captured in another scheme with which the government distribute relief materials to the vulnerable persons living in communities.

At the end of the governor’s headcount which ended past 1 am, it was discovered that out of 1,100 households in the records of humanitarian officials, 650 households were ghosts IDPs.

The governor could only authenticate 450 households in the headcount he conducted alongside an official of the National Emergency Management Agency, 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 chose to stay together for the purpose of receiving household aids.

The statement said officials who were part of the midnight headcount noted that Governor Zulum was not averse to approving support for any citizen who might be in dire need of food since a committee doing that existed.