In the next few days, food items will reach 1.67 million households across the wards of the 774 local government areas to reduce the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. The Aliko Dangote’s led Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID-19) has promised.
(CACOVID-19), is a private sector initiative led by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote and the group has thus far contributed to the account set up by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) the sum of N25 billion.
“We are buying N23 billion worth of food item, for now, to be distributed in conjunction with the state government. What we’ve done is to check how many are we in Nigeria, about 200 million people and we are taking 5 percent of the 200 million which is 10 million people and an average household is 6, so what we are now going to do is to distribute food items to 1.67 million households..” Aliko Dangote explained in an interview on how the group planned to distribute the food items.
There have been controversies over the stimulus packages announced by the Federal to cushion the effects of the lockdown imposed on some states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to contain the further spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). Many have complained that the relieve items have not been sincerely deployed.
However, the private-sector driven initiative has promised to begin the distribution of the food palliatives in the next couple of days.
Speaking at a press briefing in Lagos, the Chief Executive Officer, Aliko Dangote Foundation (ADF) Zouera Youssoufou, said CACOVID-19, apart from its food palliatives has also set its sights on increasing Nigeria’s testing capacity, setting up 6 isolation centres.
Youssoufou revealed that the coalition has ordered about 250,000 testing kits to achieve its goal to test a million Nigerians, adding that it has conducted about 6,000 tests since the beginning of the outbreak.
“The shipment of the testing kits comes in every ten days on a UNICEF plane that literally flies them into Abuja… that is when the dispatch happens. Specifically, we have 6 Roche machines in Nigeria, 4 in Abuja, 2 in Lagos and these machines are capable of testing 960 tests at a time in 3-4 hours,” Youssoufou explained.
“Also, we have set up 6 isolation centres situated in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano, Enugu, Abuja and Maiduguri. Some of them are ready to be commissioned, while others are in the process; but in the next two weeks, all the six centres of phase one will be ready to be rolled out. Phase 2 is another 26 and Phase 3 is the remaining 11 states.”
The CEO of Access Bank, Herbert Wigwe also explained how the food items will be distributed across the country.
“The food is all packaged as we are rolling out 10kg bag of rice, 5kg bag of garri, 2 cartons of noodles, 3-5kg of sugar, 1kg bag of salt, pasta, all heavily branded with CACOVID, which basically meets the World Food Programme minimum which is about 20-22kg. So, what we are also doing is to get food right to the people who are at the bottom of the pyramid”, Wigwe stated.
