Black Monday for food snatchers in Maiduguri

Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima yesterday stayed put at a distribution centre for over three hours until over 90 per cent of the benefitting families had carried their shares home.

The governor did this to avert the allegedly usual snatching and diversion of the food items by hoodlums and ‘unscrupulous’ government officials.

The event was the flagging off of Ramadan food items at Lamisula/ Jabbamari ward of the Maiduguri Metropolitan Council where 750 families received a sack of rice, a sack of sugar and a large time of tomato, as the first benefitting segment of 1.9 million families slated to benefit in the 27 wards of the MMC and Jere Local government.

It is alleged that hoodlums, especially on tricycles, torment the IDP camps and other food distribution centres by snatching such items from the beneficiaries.

Yesterday, at the Galadima Primary school of the Lamisula/Jabbamari ward, the governor’s home ward, the alleged criminals had apparently waited for the governor to be led out of the centre by the siren after his ceremonial distribution of the items to five benefitting families.

Governor Shettima instead stayed put from 11:30am to 2:30am when less than 100 beneficiaries were yet to receive their share.

In his speech earlier, the governor had expressed concern over the rampant cases of snatching of the items from beneficiaries by hoodlums, charging the security operatives to seep into all the 27 wards of the two local government areas to properly protect the beneficiaries and the food items from the hoodlums.

The food items, according the Executive Chairman of Borno SEMA, Engr. Satomi Ahmed, were distributed by Borno SEMA and MMC under the state’s Food for All Initiative and Food Aid Community Outreach.