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Benue State governor, Samuel Ortom has claimed that the state government has spent no fewer than N50bn taking care of the Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, in the state.Ortom was reacting to rumour about diversion of relief materials and misappropriation of funds by some officials of his government meant for flood victims.

When asked about the issue of misappropriation of fund and how much has been spent from the state’s pocket, Ortom said, “I think around 50 billion naira currently.

“Like I said, there has been responses from the federal government, state government and other individuals and organisations. All that we needed was just some assistance.

“We are making a comprehensive analysis, at the end we will make a decision depending on the availability of funds.

“Since we cannot pay all the salaries, we agreed that we will combine two months and pay for one month, so people can have allowance to do other things. Discussions are still going on and I’m also discussing with other financial institutions to see if we can find a way around it.

“But I still believe that if this process that we have adopted is the desired one, we still have to go step by step so we cannot inflict pain on the workers. One thing I know is that with this inflation, whatever people get is not enough. The good thing is that we are discussing and as we are discussing, we will find a way out of it,” he told Sun.

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