Ita Giwa Demands Return of Diverted Relief Materials for IDPs

Sunday Okobi
Senator Florence Ita Giwa has demanded the return of all the relief materials alleged to have been diverted from the Bakassi people in Cross River State, accusing the state governor, Professor Ben Ayade, of being behind the recent protest against her.

 The relief materials, according to her, were donated by the National Refugees Commission (NRC) to the people of Bakassi to assuage the effects of a fire outbreak on their abode – Dayspring Island in Bakassi Local Government Area.

At a press conference held in Lagos, the former presidential aide accused the state governor of being behind her ordeals, stating that “all is because of my efforts towards alleviating the plight of my people in Bakassi, and also, I was instrumental to uncovering a dastardly plot of diverting relief materials I sourced from the National Refugee Commission for victims of a fire outbreak in Dayspring Island in Bakassi by unscrupulous state officials.”

According to her, “Recent events in my home state of Cross River have given me and all well-meaning Nigerians cause for concern. As you might have heard, there has been a sustained and coordinated campaign to demonise my person and make rubbish of all my efforts.
“The so-called protests are a follow up to a spurious press release issued by an equally flippant entity that calls itself Coalition of Bakassi indigenes. Their statement contained a litany of lies, calculated to demean and defame my person.”

She equally accused former Bakassi council area Vice Chairman, Udeme Effiong Okon, who she said reported the fire outbreak to her, as the official who diverted a large quantities of the relief materials to his private residence at Calabar, and was later recovered and evacuated by the police and is now held as exhibits of a crime.

Also, while debunking some of the allegation against her that led to the protest, the former senator said: “The outrageous assertion that I was a signatory to the ceding of Bakassi ancestral land to Cameroon exposes their mischievous ignorance. Only heads of states can be signatory to such sovereign international treaties and the last time I checked, I have never been President of Nigeria.