Three officials of the National Emergency Management Agency have been arrested by the police in Maiduguri, Borno State, for allegedly taking advantage of some female persons in the Internally Displaced Persons camp in the state and infecting them with the dreaded HIV/AIDS disease.
The state Commissioner of Police, Clement Adoda, confirmed the arrest of the NEMA officials on the phone to our correspondent from Maiduguri. He, however, did not disclose the identity of the suspects.
“Following a petition by a Non-Governmental Organisation, the Business and Professional Women, about the untoward conduct of NEMA officials at the IDPs camps in Borno State, we decided to carry out surveillance on the camps,” Adoda said.
He added that three officials of NEMA, who were saddled with the responsibility of managing the camp, were the same people found to have been sexually abusing innocent teenage girls in the camp.
“They would lure the girls out, after deceiving them with promises of marriage and jobs with NEMA, only to go and sleep with them,” he said. The state police commissioner stated that the act was categorised as rape because, some times, three of the NEMA officials would have sex with a particular girl against her consent.
“They would take a girl out and three of them would have carnal knowledge of her several times, before releasing her to go back to the camp. They would threaten the girl never to reveal what happened to anybody or else she would be thrown out of the camp and killed,” Adoda said.
He stated further that the three NEMA officials were actually caught in the act. “We placed the camp under surveillance and watched out for everybody coming in and out of the camp at a certain time of the day.
Soon, the NEMA officials, who had earlier closed for the day’s work, came back to the camp at about 18.00Hrs (6.00pm) last Saturday, and later went out with a teenage girl in a Honda Prelude sport car,” he said.
The police commissioner said that the NEMA officials were traced by detectives to their residential quarters, which also doubles as the agency’s store for relief items. “So, they used some of the mattresses and other household items.
They would lock-up the poor girl inside the apartment for as long as they wished, just to be having sex with her at will and in turns. When they got tired of that particular girl, they would go and drop her and pick another one.
That was how they ended up infecting three of the girls with HIV/AIDS after impregnating them,” he said. Adoda disclosed that the NEMA management had been informed about the development, adding that the affected officials would be charged to court for rape, abuse of office, threat to life, intimidation and conduct likely to breach public peace.
Five Internally Displaced Persons, including three females in Maiduguri, allegedly tested positive to HIV/ AIDS after they were screened for malaria and HIV/AIDS in the camps. Out of the five, three were said to be pregnant and would need urgent medical attention.
The test took place penultimate Wednesday, and was carried out by a nongovernmental organisation, the Business and Professional Women, to ascertain among other things, the health status of the camp inmates.
The leader of the group, Dr. Ismaila Watila, stated this in a petition to the police in the state. Watila said that the five IDPs were part of the 1,000 so far screened by the group.
“We are conducting free screening for IDPs on HIV, malaria and other disease conditions. The programme is being conducted by the BPW in conjunction with the National Agency for Control of Aids (NACA) and the Sure P,” he said.
Watila said that the aim of the programme was to ascertain the health status of the IDPs and prevent the spread of diseases among them. “We started on Monday, and so far, we have screened over 1,000 out of the 8,000 IDPs in the camp. Out of these, only five have tested positive to HIV/AIDS,” he said.
