Borno Governor, Professor Babagana Umara Zulum showed up at Mohammed Goni College of Islamic Legal Studies, MOGOCOLIS, in Maiduguri, in the early hours of Sunday, where internally displaced persons from Abadam local government area of northern Borno were being camped.

Zulum immediately sealed 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, who spend day time at IDP camps to share in the food meant for IDPs, and towards the night, they return to their homes to sleep, with some of benefiting from other means through which the state distributes food to vulnerable non IDPs in communities.

Governor Zulum’s mission, which ended at about past 1am, led to the discovery that out of 1,000 households in the records of humanitarian officials, 650 households were ghosts (inexistent).

450 households were found to be real IDPs after Zulum’s midnight headcount which was conducted by the governor alongside an official of the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, 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 chosen to stay together for the purpose of receiving household aids.

Officials who were part of the midnight headcount said Governor Zulum was not averse to approving support for any citizen who may be vulnerably in need of food since there is a committee doing that, however, 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 target non IDPs.

Borno Governor and an official of NEMA conducting headcount midnight on Sunday, at Mohammed Goni College of Islamic Legal Studies, MOGOCOLIS, where IDPs from Abadam LGS, are camped in Maiduguri.