The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) command in Borno, on Sunday, said it arrested 10 ward heads in Maiduguri over alleged land grabbing and swindling of the public.

The corps Commandant, Mr Ibrahim Abdullahi, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Maiduguri.

He said most of the ward heads had perpetrated more than five land fraud on unsuspected persons with the connivance of some ministry staff.

He explained that “the culprits normally take advantage of people who don’t always check up on their plots of land.

“Whenever they notice that a land owner is not always around, they make fake papers and sell the plots to unsuspected individuals.

“There are instances where one plot of land is being sold to five or six different persons. What they do is that they usually change their names during the fraudulent transactions.

“We are doing whatever we can to get back the money of the people they defrauded and take the suspected ward heads to court to face the law.”

Abdullahi said the Dispute Resolution Department of the NSCDC command in Borno recorded 38 cases of land grabbing perpetrated by ward heads in Maiduguri in two months.

The commandant, therefore, advised the public to be wary of persons disguising as land owners as some were just out to defraud people.