NEMA DG Maihaja
Embattled Director
General of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) Mustapha
Maihaja, has commenced desperate moves to evacuate and dispose about
6,779metric tons of rice donated by the Chinese government for
distribution to Internally Displaced Persons in the North East.
This
followed discovery by the House of Representatives committee on
Emergency and Disaster Preparedness which indicted Maihaja for fraud,
misappropriation and embezzlement of whopping sum of N33 billion of
funds released to the agency in just one year.
Information
available to the committee indicates that Maihaja and the Director
Relief Services arrived in Gombe early Wednesday and have already
contacted NEMA officers in Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Yobe and
Taraba states to prepare and forge papers to claim that they received
the items while making effort to evacuate and dispose the items from
the warehouse in Gombe.
The
committee has further discovered that hundreds of metric tons of the
Chinese donated rice have been kept under lock and key in a private
warehouse in Lagos under questionable circumstances.
“We
are intensifying efforts to unravel the mystery surrounding how the
rice was diverted from the ports to the said warehouse instead of
being transported directly to the affected states for onward
distribution to IDPs who are dying of hunger, starvation and
malnutrition,”a statement from the committee chaired by Hon Ali Isa
J. C said.
“The
committee wants to use this opportunity to alert members of the
public to watch out and be careful so that they don’t buy or
consume the rotten rice which will pose great risk to their health.”
Another
source in the agency disclosed that Maihaja has directed top
management staff to alter procurement and relief items distribution
documents so as to cover his tracks.
“We
want the public to be vigilant especially residents of Gombe where
the wasted rice was allowed to rotten despite paying the sum of N800
million as cost of demurrage accumulated at the port by NEMA under
Maihaja.”
Early
on Wednesday, images of the 271 trucks and approximately 162,696 bags
of rice the wasted bags of rice was released by the Committee which
jolted the public attracting wide condemnations from all section of
the country.
This
is happening at a time the country is facing acute shortage of food
for IDPs causing malnutrition in children
According
to the United Nations, Nigeria is still facing a crisis of global
magnitude with 7.7 million people in need of humanitarian assistance
in the north east.
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