…Flags off Covid-19 vaccination of IDPs
…Recruits IDP women leaders
Amidst reports of worsening living conditions of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and alleged corruption, flagrant breach of procurement due process, and misgovernance levelled against the Federal Commissioner and chief executive of the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants, and Internally Displaced Persons (NCFRMI), Mrs. Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, the NCFRMI boos is said to have gone on public relations overdrive to save her seat.
It has been about three weeks since the media, civil society organisations, IDPs, and concerned staff of the Commission have continued to reel out various alleged malfeasances at the agency and the worsening conditions of IDPs, neither the agency nor Mrs. Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim has come up with a convincing rebuttal backed with documents.
Last week, the Chairman of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), Durmi camp, in Garki, Abuja city centre, Mr. Umaru Gola, narrated to another online news platform, Daily Post, how the camp, which is just one of the many IDP centres in Abuja, has been burying at least one member of their IDPs community on weekly basis.
Enquiries by media organisations organisations have always been met with a promise to get back to the reporters, which the agency never kept.
Likewise, requests for interviews and invitations to live television and radio programmes to tell its own part of the story were always met with statements like “we are still putting our house and documents in order”.
However, reliable sources revealed that the Refugees Commission has instead embarked on what members of staff and management see as ‘damage control’ such as vaccination of IDPs without advocacy and meeting with some purported women leaders in selected Abuja IDP camps to launder her image.
“Tomorrow (Thursday), the Honourable Federal Commissioner will flag off a Covid-19 vaccination campaign at Wura IDP camp, Abuja, with the distribution of those Operation Total Hunger (IDPs name for Operation Zero Hunger project introduced by the HFC).
“It is noteworthy that the competent members of management advised her that vaccination of IDPs against Covid-19 should be preceded by meeting with the leaders of the IDPs camps and sensitisation to get the buy-in of the IDPs.
“In fact, she wanted to start it on the Monday after the media reports and press conference by the National Human Rights Commission detailing the incompetence, corruption, abuse of power, and misgovernance that has been hampering the operations of the agency since the appointment of Mrs. Sulaiman-Ibrahim as head of the agency in June 2021. She brushed aside the suggestions of staff because she had already mobilised for full media coverage to launder her image. It has never been about the interest of the IDPs. After all, the proposal for vaccination, with the sensitisation component has been there all the while.
“However, we reliably gathered that the leadership of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) told her the same thing, saying the NPHCDA would not be a part of a Covid-19 vaccination without a proper sensitisation and understanding of the IDPs.
“She was then forced to call it off via a message circulated to the staff saying ‘The inaugural ceremony of Covid-19 vaccination to IDPs that is supposed to hold tomorrow (Monday, 29th November 2021) morning has been postponed; a new date will be communicated to the nominated staff as well’.
“She initially wanted to use the Durumi IDP camp, but leaders of the camp refused, saying they needed food and other relief materials, not vaccines, saying the agency never cared about them.
“On Friday (10th December 2021), there will be IDP women leaders meeting with union of women journalists. She wants the IDP women to present her as empathetic and caring towards their plights so that the women journalists can report it.
“On Sunday, the HFC will be in Government House, Lafia to flag off distribution of relief items to IDPs. Note the political undertone because there are no IDPs in Lafia, by our official record, yet she is organising the event at the Government House. The IDP camps in Nasarawa are in Toto, Doma, Eggon and other parts of the State, but certainly not Lafia, the state’s seat of power”, the source revealed.
Meanwhile, it is recalled that Mr. Gola, Chairman of Durumi IDP camp had said that the over 3,000 persons displaced by insurgency and bandits from the Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States, who are quartered in the Durumi camp have been living in deplorable conditions, saying their members were dying of hunger, diseases, and other life-threatening factors.
He said: “Everybody has been left to face his or her fate; we are alive till today by the grace of God and the help of some good spirited Nigerians who come once in a while to donate items to the displaced persons.
“The young men among us are the ones trying to help us in most cases. They go out daily and engage in activities like commercial motorcycling just to help the situation but we bury some of them like twice in a week or sometimes once in a month due to road accidents.
“We have been left to struggle on our own. Most times, when there is a health challenge that is beyond us, we go to churches and mosques to beg for assistance.
“Sometimes, when rich people visit us, we tell them our challenges, maybe about some persons in the hospital and they help us to settle the medical bills”, he stated.
Also, a parent and mother of five in the camp, Mrs. Hanatu, said that since they joined the IDPs in the camp in 2015, there has been no formal education for her children owing to lack of money.
“Our concern is how to even feed them not to talk of school yet. Since Boko Haram killed their father in 2015 and took over our village, in Borno, my children have not gone to any school.
“We don’t like the life we are living here today, our greatest prayer is that one day, we will return to our ancestral home and continue our lives there”, she said.
Another displaced person, who spoke to Daily Post on condition of anonymity, revealed that the poor environment has exposed them to several diseases in the camp.
He said, “We are dying slowly, this is not where human beings should live. Because of the environment as you can see, our people fall sick every day and some die due to lack of medical facilities. We want the government to help us. They should come and rescue us from this hardship.
“We are also Nigerians and we need to feel relevant in the society like others. No one would choose this kind of horrible life, it is the condition we found ourselves.”
Addressing newsmen about three weeks ago, HURIWA’s National Coordinator had alleged: “On resumption of office in June 2021, Mrs. Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim allegedly awarded contract of over N32 million for the furnishing of the office of the Honourable Federal Commissioner (HFC), which the previous HFC, Senator Bashir Lado, had reportedly tastefully renovated and refurnished about a month before his redeployment to the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP).
“We consider this a gross Misapplication of public funds, especially given the conditions of IDPs and that the Commission’s zonal offices are in total disrepair with staff lacking logistics and basic office furniture to carry out their legitimate duties.
‘We gather that some staff even come to the office with their personal chairs from their homes. Yet, the FHC’s office was allegedly furnished at the cost of N32 million”.
Meanwhile, insider sources have further alleged that the refusal of the HFC to approve a mission to Kano by staff of the Refugee Determination Unit of the agency to document refugees from the Central Africa Republic to risk the dangerous Kano-Kaduna-Abuja roads to the Commission’s Abuja headquarters for the exercise, but were chased away by security agents, allegedly on the orders of Mrs. Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim so as not to draw the attention of the press.
It is recalled that that concerned staff of the agency had petitioned the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Sadiya Umar Farouq, the Chief of Staff to the President, Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Independent Corrupt Practice and Related Offences Commission, and the National Human Rights Commission, calling for the suspension and probe of the HFC, Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim.
A source at the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs said Sadiya Umar Farouq had ordered a probe into the petition, noting that Sulaiman-Ibrahim had been running from Aso Presidential Villa to the Defence and Police Office Wives Association (with whom she is running the Operation Zero Hunger project) to stave her sack.
However, while the HFC is yet to answer to media enquiries over allegations of corruption and abuse of power, insider sources at the agency revealed that the HFC, who preferred to stay at the cozy HFC annex office at the British Village, Wuse 2, Abuja, despite pleas by the union leaders, now frequents the Federal Secretariat.
Other damage control measures, the source said, include the release of the long-withheld Toyota Landcruiser bullet proof SUV donated to the Maiduguri office of the agency by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, replacing the Commission’s Director of Procurement with an internal person contrary to her initial insistence that the removed Director hand over to someone she brought from NAPTIP, approval of trips for staff, among others.
The sources allege that the refusal to come out to refute the allegations of corruption might not be unconnected with efforts to “clean up their records”, alleging “intensive backdating of documents with some internal auditors and the DFA”.
According to presenters of Political Platform on Raypower Radio, the spokesperson of the agency said they were yet unable to honour the invitation to tell their side of the story as they were “still putting their house in order”.
