Benue State Government on Saturday raised the alarm that criminals, people from host communities and market women have infiltrated the camp set aside for displaced persons from Yelwata community located along International Market.

The state Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Aonduwaser Kunde, stated this on Saturday while addressing journalists.

According to him, the alleged criminals on Friday night stole some non-food items while market women invaded the camp and bought off food items distributed to the displaced persons.

He said, “We have been experiencing issues in the camp for the past two days and we discovered a lot of infiltrators in the camp and conducted investigation after the protest and discovered that criminals and people from the host community in Makurdi were behind the protest.

“So, we resolved that we were at the camp by 4am today (Saturday) to fish out those criminals, and discovered that they stole mattresses. They used the area where the fence collapsed to access the camp.

“We discovered that some market women have started coming to the camp to buy off rice and food items distributed to displaced persons.

“We also discovered that some women who were claiming to be lactating mothers went out to borrow babies from outside to be able to access the camp when they discovered that the first set of people we attended to were pregnant women and lactating mothers.

“When these so-called lactating mothers were asked to breastfeed their babies, we discovered there was no milk coming out of their breasts.

The commissioner, however, stated that 50 fake displaced persons have been arrested.

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