Zulum Uncovers 650 Ghost Households At IDP Camp

Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno State has uncovered 650 ghost households during a surprised midnight visit to an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in Maiduguri.

A statement on Sunday by the governor’s spokesman, Isa Gusau, said Zulum showed up around midnight on Saturday at Mohammed Goni College of Islamic Legal Studies in Maiduguri to know those who were being camped.

Gusau said 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 statement said the ghost IDPs are 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 were captured in another scheme with which the government distributes relief materials to the vulnerable persons living in communities.

Gusau added that at the end of the governor’s headcount which ended past 1a.m, it was discovered that out of 1,000 households in the records of humanitarian officials, 650 households were ghosts.

He said the governor could only authenticate 450 households in the headcount he conducted alongside an official of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Air Commodore MT Abdullahi, and two commissioners – Agriculture, and Local Government, and Emirate Affairs.

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

Gusau, however, added that 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 are targeted at non-IDPs.