BY TAYE OBATERU
Jos— Plateau State Chapter of Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, has faulted the claim by the National Emergency Relief Agency, NEMA, that there are one million internally displaced persons from Plateau State now resettled in Bauchi State.

Addressing newsmen on Monday, the association described the claim credited to NEMA’s Director General, Mohammed Sani Sidi as spurious and called on the National Assembly and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to investigate the matter.

Chairman, Northern Zone of CAN in the state, Rev. David King Bamidele queried where NEMA got the figure from in view of the population of Plateau State and areas affected by the crisis in particular.

Rev Bamidele said: “We are surprised by the figure released by NEMA, If we may ask, what is the population of Plateau State? What is the population of Jos North Local Government where the said displaced persons are from? If you remove over one million people from Jos North what will remain of Jos North?”, he wondered

He described as disturbing and scandalous “that officials of state can willfully concoct and manufacture statistics about non-existent situations, plainly to service the machinery of fraud and racketeering that has since become a huge industry.”

Rev. Bamidele accused NEMA of discriminatory attitude in handling the Jos crisis, alleging that the one million figure of displaced persons in Bauchi was to justify the huge amount being collected to ostensibly take care of them.