Contrary to assumption that the Borno State Government has received billions of cash donations in local and foreign currencies for the management of Internally Displaced Persons, the State Governor, Kashim Shettima has revealed that N345m is the overall amount received since May, 2011 when he inherited the Boko Haram crisis.
Governor Shettima made the disclosure while responding to questions by journalists in Maiduguri shortly after his arrival from Abuja at the weekend.
Giving a breakdown, he said: “The FG under Jonathan gave us N200m in 4 years; Lagos State Government, N50m in October, 2015; Edo State Government, N25m in 2013; Kano State, N20m in 2013; Adamawa State, N20m in 2013; Ekiti State, N10m in 2013; Osun State, N10m in 2013; Kaduna State, N5m; Unity Bank, N5m.
“There is one woman who prefers her name not to be mentioned, she donated one hundred thousand naira in cash bringing total cash received to three hundred and forty five million, one hundred thousand naira.
“We spent N600m every month to cater for IDP’S throughout the Jonathan era. All other interventions have been in kind through donation of food items or medical supplies etc and they include: Kebbi State Government – 1,200 bags of rice; Ebonyi State Government gave us 5,000 bags of rice; Taraba gave us 3 trucks of highland tea; Gombe gave us 6 trucks of assorted food products via 2 interventions.”
The Governor further explained that International partners operate in such a way that they had technical partners that implemented their interventions.
”We have received tremendous support from some part of the International community but no foreign country or any International partner within or outside the UN and major world donors gave any cash to our administration from 2011 to date.
“Rather, all donations come in materials like medical supplies, technical support and food items, most of which are directly distributed by the International partners themselves to reach IDP’S in different parts of Borno State.
“Amounts you might hear through the media were not cash donated to Borno by international partners but rather, items and services worth such amount mentioned to the public. They do not give cash.
“For instance, there was a time the General Electric graciously donated one million dollars to Borno in support of IDPS; I was at the presentation in Abuja, I was even presented the symbolic cheque but the money was paid to UNICEF and it was UNICEF that implemented the intervention in the era of healthcare and nutrition.
“When the Government of Norway announced donation of 4 million dollars, the money wasn’t given in the form of cash to Borno, it was the worth of their food supplies and these food supplies are being distributed by the Norwegian Refugee Council which deals directly with the IDPS in Borno.
“The ICRC has made the highest humanitarian intervention in Borno but we don’t even know how much they have spent, they have their men on ground who deal directly with the IDPS across Borno State.
“The World Food Programme also makes intervention of food and recently they are doing conditional cash transfers and that also is handled by officials of the World Food Programme.
“If there is one organization that has given us any cash donation outside the N345m for IDPS, it was the Dangote Foundation which gave Borno N400m but that wasn’t for IDPS, it was an economic empowerment program for women which the Dangote Group launched in different States including Lagos, Kano, Jigawa, Kogi, Adamawa and Yobe in which N10,000 each was given to about three or four hundred thousand women.
“The N2b Dangote announced in support of Borno two months ago, we requested that he doesn’t give us cash but building materials worth the amount.
“As far as 2012, I foresaw eventual mischief on this issue of intervention on IDP’S, that was why we made it a policy of not dealing with cash but supplies.
“In most cases, we insist that donors supervise the distribution of their donations to the IDPS, this was exactly what we did with the 104 trailers of food donated by Dangote Foundation for the Ramadan feeding for IDPS. Officials of Dangote led the entire distribution.
“So, I really don’t know where this issue of Borno collecting Billions for the purpose of IDPS came from. The Borno State Government has been the one bearing the major brunt of managing these over two million IDPs throughout the Jonathan era.
“We have spent Billions of our resources in feeding IDPS and reconstruction of many communities yet we manage to pay salary of N2.6b to our workers by 26th of every month. We paid salaries of June last week. People should be fair; we are not angels, we have our short comings as humans but we do our best most of the time to meet the needs of our citizens”.
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