From Okwe Obi, Abuja
Nearly seven months after the vandalisation and looting of warehouses where COVID-19 palliatives were kept, the Federal Government is yet to fish out and sanction officials who hoarded the items.
The Federal Government had released food items to states for distribution to most vulnerable persons but the items such as noodles, garri, groundnut oil, sugar, bags of rice and beans, were not shared for months to targeted beneficiaries who were languishing in hunger while the lockdown persisted.
While some state governments denied knowledge of the items in their possession, the Federal Government, through the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, had accused officials of those states of stashing away the items.
“I, as the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, want to categorically state that the palliatives donated to the Ministry by the Nigerian Customs Services, National Strategic Grain Reserve, and many good willing donors were handed to State officials for onward distribution to the poor and vulnerable in their states,” she said.
But a mass protest later revealed that the items in some of the states were hoarded fuelling allegations of government officials helping themselves with the materials.
Daily Sun learnt that till date and despite evidence of the hoarding of the palliatives, no official has been arrested or prosecuted for the crime.