Barely 24 hours after Nigeria’s First Lady, Remi Tinubu visited Benue State and donated N1 billion for the upkeep of the displaced families in the state, the Makurdi-Lafia highway was on Wednesday taken over by hundreds of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) housed at the Maga IDPs camp Mbayongo in the outskirts of Makurdi, Benue State capital, in protest over alleged lack of food and other necessities.
The angry IDPs who barricaded the highway at the junction leading to the camp held tree branches and sang solidarity songs saying “We are hungry”, “We want to go back home”, among others.
One of the protesters who gave her name as Rebecca Awuse explained that they embarked on the protest to draw the attention of the government to their plight.
She said, “We want to go back home, we are hungry and we are tired of staying in the camp where we are not being taken care of.”
Reacting, the Information Officer of Benue State Emergency Management Agency, BSEMA, Tema Ager, said the protest was politically instigated.
“The IDPs are not being starved, the government is providing food for them. Those IDPs in Yelewata usually abandon their camp and move to the camp in the International Market in Makurdi because it is a recent camp and people have been trooping in there for food.
“Even when we take food to them there in Yelewata, they still come back to the International Market to collect more. The major issue that triggered this protest is politics, all because the first lady visited yesterday and announced the donation of N1 billion.
“What the first lady, Mrs. Tinubu announced yesterday cannot happen today and moreso, the money is for resettlements not for food. Some of them are protesting that they were given money and we have not shared it to them,” Ager stated.
When the last food items were distributed to IDPs in the state, Ager said, “As we speak food is being distributed to them. The last time food was distributed to the IDPs was in May this year but currently food is being distributed to them across the state.”