The Benue State Government has confirmed the arrest of 50 fake internally displaced persons at the International Market located along George Akume way in Makurdi, the state capital.
The State Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Aondowase Kunde, disclosed this on Saturday in Makurdi.
Mr Kunde said that criminals had infiltrated the IDPs camp opened for victims of Yelwata attack.
He said that 50 fake internally displaced persons were arrested, adding that people from the host community and market women infiltrated the camp.
He stated that the criminals on Friday night broke into the camp and stole some non-food items while market women too invaded the camp to buy off food items distributed to the IDPs.
He said, “We have had issues in the camp for the past two days and we discovered a lot of infiltrators in the camp. We conducted investigations after the protest and discovered that criminals and people from the host community in Makurdi were behind the protest. So, we resolved that we must be at the camp by 4am today (Saturday) to fish out those criminals and discovered that they stole mattresses through a collapsed fence to access the camp.
“We discovered that some market women have started coming to the camp to buy off rice and food items distributed to the displaced persons. We also discovered that some women who claimed to be lactating mothers went out to borrow babies from outside to be able to access the camp when they discovered that the first set of people we attended to were pregnant women and lactating mothers. When these so-called lactating mothers were asked to breast feed their babies, it was discovered that there was no milk coming out of their breasts.’’
(NAN)