Shettima: N345m is Total Cash Donation Received for IDPs from 2011 to Date

Contrary to insinuations that the Borno State Government has received billions of cash donations in local and foreign currencies for the management of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), the state Governor, Kashim Shettima, has revealed that only a total of N345million has been received as cash donations from May 2011 when he inherited the Boko Haram crisis to date.

Shettima made the disclosure while responding to questions from journalists in Maiduguri shortly after his arrival from Abuja.

The journalists sought his response on the allegations on the social media and a section of the main stream media that the state government had received billions of naira in cash donations as support to cater for IDPS whereas the donations were diverted by government officials with food supplies not provided for the IDPs.

“You see, contrary to wild assumptions that the Borno State Government has received billions of cash donations in local and foreign currencies for the management of IDPs, a lot of Nigerians may be shocked to know that a total of N345million is the overall amount received as cash donation by our administration from May, 2011 to date.

“Here is the list of cash donations we received from all sources whatsoever for the support of IDPS, in Borno State and this figure is from 2011 when I took over, to this moment: The federal government under Jonathan gave us N200million in four years; Lagos State Government, N50million in October, 2015; Edo State Government, N25million in 2013; Kano State, N20million in 2013 and Adamawa State, N20 million in 2013

“Other are Ekiti State, N10 million in 2013; Osun State, N10 million in 2013; Kaduna State, N5 million and Unity Bank, N5 million

“There is one woman who prefers her name not to be mentioned, she donated N100,000 in cash bringing total cash received to three hundred and forty five million, one hundred thousand naira.

So, in effect, N345million is the total cash donation received by the Borno State Government from 2011 to date meant for support of IDPs and we were spending N600 million every month to cater for IDPs throughout the Jonathan era.

“All other interventions have been in kind through donation of food items or medical supplies etc and they include:

A. Kebbi State Government had donated 1,200 bags of rice; Ebonyi State Government gave us 5,000 bags of rice; Taraba gave us three trucks of highland tea and Gombe gave us six trucks of assorted food products via two interventions.

“These were all for IDP interventions from state government but of course, there have many other groups who visited and donated food items in the last five years but certainly not cash to Borno State Government,” he said.

The governor explained that international partners operate in such a way that they have technical partners that implement 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 for the purpose of IDPs but 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 IDPs in different parts of Borno State.

He noted that “the World Food Programme (WFP) also makes intervention of food and recently they are doing conditional cash transfers and that also is handled by officials of the WFP. If there is one organisation that has given us any cash donation outside the N345 million for IDPS, it was the Dangote Foundation which gave Borno N400 million but that wasn’t for IDPS, it was an economic empowerment programme for women which the Dangote Group launched in different States including Lagos,Kano, Jigawa, Kogi, Adamawa and Yobe States in which N10,000 each was given to about three or four hundred thousand women across these states I mentioned. The N2billion Dangote announced in support of Borno two months ago, we requested that he doesn’t give us cash but building materials worth the amount.”

Shettima also said “as far as 2012, I foresaw eventual mischief on this issue of intervention on IDPs, that was why we made it a policy of not dealing with cash but supplies and even on the supplies when the food is much, 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 twwo million IDPs throughout the Jonathan era. We have spent billions of our resources not only in feeding IDPs but also in reconstruction of many communities from 2011 to date and yet we manage to pay salary of N2.6billion to our workers by 26th of every month without failing for once. We have paid salaries of June last week. I think people should be fair to us. 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.”