The police in Edo State have arrested two suspects in connection with the looted ten-kilogramme bags of palliative rice, stored in a parked truck at Urora community in Ikpoba-Okha Local Government Area of Edo.
Commissioner of Police, Funsho Adegboye, made this known in Benin, the state capital yesterday at a briefing.
On August 1, at the commencement of the nationwide protest, tagged: “#EndBadGovernance,” there was a 40-second viral video of residents looting rice from a truck parked at a warehouse in Urora, with the residents claiming that the warehouse belonged to Edo state government.
Chairman, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Edo chapter, Dr. Irekpono Omoike, however, stated at a news conference at the Chancellery of the Catholic Archdiocese of Benin that the vandalised residence, where bags of rice were looted at Urora, was owned by a vendor that was contracted by Edo CAN’s implementation committee for the Christian feeding programme.
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He noted that the Christian feeding programme, in its second phase of distributing relief materials to vulnerable Christian groups, was funded by the state government with N2 billion.
Omoike said: “There is a very important issue to correct a wrong notion that is circulating that the rice being distributed by the state government is rice supplied by the Federal Government and re-bagged. This is misinformation. It is a very wrong notion that needs to be corrected.
“Earlier this year, the Edo State chapter of CAN had a meeting with Governor Godwin Obaseki, where he shared his concern on how to reach out to vulnerable persons and the poor, who are bearing the hardship of the economic downturn in the country.
“After the meeting, an implementation committee for the Christian feeding programme was set up, where we designed a programme on how to reach out to the poor with food palliatives. The governor released the first batch of the funding for the programme, which is N1 billion, to purchase rice to be distributed. This was done, and in May 2024, we kicked off the distribution of the first phase at the Baptist Convention Ground in Benin City, with the distribution of 60,000 bags of 10kg rice.
“For the second phase, another batch of N1 billion was released by the governor to replicate the exercise. We purchased another consignment, distributed it through the structure of CAN. This process has been ongoing since July. In the last few days, we have distributed to the churches that did not receive the first batch, across the 18 LGAs, and we were able to reach 56,250. There is another consignment in this second phase, just as we did in the first phase, meant for churches not under CAN, since this was done in partnership with CAN.”