Buhari orders Nigeria Customs to distribute seized rice, others to displaced persons.

The Public Relations Officer of the Nigeria Customs, Wale Adeniyi, disclosed this in Abuja today. He said Pres. Buhari has directed the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, to transfer relief items in various customs warehouses to designated officials for onward distribution to Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs.

According to Adeniyi, the Comptroller General has set up a national committee that would coordinate and manage the movement and the transfer of seized relief items to give effect to the President’s directive. He said the relief items currently in government warehouses for distribution to the IDPs included goods that had been forfeited to the FG.

His words: “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 FG. They include food items like rice, vegetable oil, spaghetti and essential items like soap, used clothing materials, mosquito nets, bedding and others.’’ .

Members of the committee were drawn from Customs Service, Army, Air Force, Police, Immigration Service and the EFCC. The customs boss also included some NGOs, civil society organisations and the media to give the committee a measure of transparency and credibility. .

He said that customs had taken an initial step to determine the locations of the IDP camps. He said that the service had thought that IDPs camps were only in Borno and Adamawa states, but discovered that there were over 20 of such camps. The distribution of the items would slightly be different from the previous ones the service had done. .

He said: “This time around, our targets are not the IDPs camps; our targets are the IDPs themselves who are in these camps, because we want these things to end up directly with the end users.” He added that the service would go beyond the IDPs camps to communities and villages where Nigerians had been displaced. Cc: PremiumTimes @imshehu