The National Coordinator of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, Dr. Sani Aliyu has disclosed that some states in the phase 3 stage have received 90% of the CACOVID palliatives and praised the response of the Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID) in battling the pandemic.
Aliyu disclosed this on Thursday at the daily briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 in Abuja.
He said that CACOVID didn’t let the lootings of warehouses to ruin their morale, and disclosed that before the lootings, 95% of donations had already been disbursed and that the State Governments were responsible for the distribution of palliatives and CACOVID “has kept careful and transparent records of the distribution process.”
“We can confirm that the donation initiative is currently 95% complete, even though we have seen a lot of looting of some of the warehouses under the state governments.
“Even though the delivery is 97 per cent complete for states in Phase 1 and 2. There are three phases. States in Phase 3 have received 90 per cent of their supply. State Governments that have received their donations are responsible for the distribution of these palliatives to their local government areas.
“We ask beneficiaries to please cooperate with their state and their local governments and we welcome the plan by CACOVID to provide detailed information on the resources that they have put in, the donations they have made to government, and other parts of the COVID response.”
He said the lootings were unfortunate as the donations were voluntary in easing difficulties caused by lockdown restrictions, as the scale of the donations were large and had to be done in phases.
“What has happened over the last few weeks has been most unfortunate. We have a situation where an organization with the very best of intentions had put tremendous resources to assist government and the public in alleviating the difficulties seen since the lockdown,” he said.
“They are responsible for ensuring the operation of the payment portal and we wouldn’t have been able to open the airports at the time we did if not for the contribution of CACOVID.
“They have put in tremendous amount of resources into the palliatives response. They have provided drugs and food items to every state in the country.
“This is no doubt a massive exercise which requires a lot of logistics and arrangements and had to be done in phases in other to avoid pushing the price of food and pushing inflation rate higher.
“They have handed most of these food stuff to the state governments before the unfortunate event happened,” he added.
What you should know
Nairametrics reported in April that CACOVID set aside N23 billion to be used for the purchase of food relief materials for 1.67 million households – 10 million vulnerable Nigerians.
According to the group, all wards in each of the LGAs will benefit from this outreach, and it will be done in conjunction with the various State governments.
Chairman of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, explained that the coalition was going to feed 5% of Nigeria’s estimated 200 million population. “We should start giving food out within the next 10 days,” he said.
Reacting to looting of palliative warehouses in October, CACOVID said: “The Coalition is deeply concerned by the recent events and is urging those involved in the wanton destruction of public and private property to immediately desist from these raids, in order to allow the States to proceed with a peaceful and fair distribution of these palliatives to the neediest and most vulnerable in our society.
“The very large size of the order and the production cycle required to meet the demand caused delays in delivering the food items to the states in an expeditious manner; hence, the resultant delay in delivery of the food palliatives by the State Governors.”
