On Sunday, several citizens of the state capital broke into a private warehouse in the Kpansia neighbourhood of Yenagoa, the capital of Bayelsa State, where the state government kept food and other supplies. They took food and other commodities.
The supplies included bags of rice and garri, cartons of noodles, and bottles of water that were reportedly part of the relief supplies that concerned Nigerians gave following the state’s disaster in 2022.
Around 7.30 p.m., the people assaulted the warehouse off the Isaac Boro Motorway using pick-up trucks and personal cars to remove the food, the most of which had already gone bad.
The state government sent out troops from its security unit known as Doo Akpo to disperse the people and secure the building while the looting was still going on.
The food products were leftovers being gathered for disposal since they were no longer fit for human consumption, according to the state administration, which described the occurrence as inappropriate and voiced astonishment and alarm by the invasion of the privately held warehouse’s premises.
The event happened at 7.45 p.m. on Sunday, after the Director-General of BYSEMA, Walamam Igrubia, and several agency employees had left the warehouse premises, according to a statement released by the State Emergency Management Agency on Monday.
The statement said, in part, that “the agency used the warehouse to store food during the state’s flood in 2022.”
“The DG visited the location as part of preparations for an upcoming flood this year, and in his presence, leftover food products, particularly rice and garri that were no longer safe to eat, were removed from the warehouse and deposited outside for disposal the following day.
Less than ten bags of rice and garri, along with a few broken oil cans, were among the leftovers that were picked up off the floor and placed inside old bags. BYSEMA emphasises that neither the organisation nor the state government stockpiled these supplies, nor were they fresh food palliatives.
