President Muhammudu Buhari has directed the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, to transfer relief items in its possession to designated officials for onward distribution to Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs.
This was disclosed by the Service Public Relations Officer, Wale Adeniyi, in an interview in Abuja on Sunday.
Mr. Adeniyi added that the Comptroller General had already set up a national committee that would coordinate the movement and the transfer of seized relief items following the instructions issued by President Buhari.
“It is important to stress that these items are only those that have been condemned properly in the competent court of law and have been forfeited to the Federal Government of Nigeria.
“They include food items like rice, vegetable oil, spaghetti and essential items like soap, used clothing materials, mosquito nets, beddings and others,’’ Mr Adeniyi said.
The committee members were gotten from Customs Service, Army, Air Force, Police, Immigration Service and the EFCC.
Some NGOs, civil society organisations and the media have also been included to give the committee a measure of transparency and credibility.
He went on to say, “We expect that the exercise will take a period of about eight weeks and the trip will start very soon.
“The exercise is going to be slightly different from what we have been doing before because we want these things to end up directly with the end users.
“We are going to be working with state governments, community leaders and other relief agencies to ensure that these items get to the IDPs in a secure and transparent manner."
Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced in the north-eastern part of the country by the Boko Haram insurgency.
No comments:
Post a Comment