The private sector led Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID) yesterday formally announced the flag-off of a nationwide distribution of multi-billion naira food palliative and other relief items to mitigate the adverse effects of the novel coronavirus pandemic on vulnerable Nigerians. The food relief materials for which the private sector operators are spending about N23 billion, will cover 1.7 million families amounting to about 10 million people across the 774 local governments in the country, including the Federal Capital Territory.
CACOVID Administrator and CEO of Aliko Dangote Foundation (ADF), Zouera Youssoufou, told newsmen in Lagos that the food distribution is the next phase in the line of actions mapped out by the coalition to partner government in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and relieve the vulnerable people of the burden posed by the outbreak of the disease.
Zouera disclosed that with the announcement in Lagos, the Coalition has divided the nation into the six geo-political zones and the distribution was being flagged-off simultaneously in states such as Adamawa, Yobe, Ekiti Ogun, delta, Edo, Kano, Sokoto, Kaduna, Plateau, and Nasarawa.
The offer of food palliatives is coming on the heels CACOVID’s donations, of medical equipment in some instances, to state governments to strengthen their response capacity and outright building of isolation facilities in about 38 centres in the country, for which the Coalition had spent about N15 billion, to help ease off the pressure on the states and Federal Government in their responses to the Pandemic.
CACOVID has also helped to reinforce the testing capacity of the NCDC with the donation of over 300,000 test kits and PPEs just as the Coalition is primed to commence the third and final phase of its COVID-19 response plan.
