Nigeria’s Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Sadiya Farouq, says the Federal Government palliative to cushion the effect of Covid-19 lockdown will target the urban poor citizens who have N5,000 or less in their bank accounts, or regularly recharge their mobile telephone handsets with N100 or less.
The Minister announced this while briefing State House Correspondents, after she held a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, who had directed two days ago that 3.6 million Nigerians be reached with government palliatives.
According to her: “These are people who depend on the informal sector to earn their livelihood; they are daily wage earners and these are the people that we are really going to focus more on as well as people living with disabilities.
“We have three options; one, we are going to use the national social register that we already have. Two, we are also going to focus on the urban poor as I mentioned, by using their verified BVN accounts to get them; That is, people that have an account balance of N5,000 and below.
“We are also using the mobile networks, to know people that top up the credit units for their phones with may be N100 or less. Those are also people that we consider to be poor and vulnerable.
“So, these are the three options that we are exploring and I am sure that by the time we get these data we will be able to give this intervention.”
She however said only 25 percent of the population would benefit for now, adding that the scope may be expanded later.
“It cannot go round everywhere but we are starting from somewhere – 25 percent of let’s say the location of Lagos State for example, is what is going to benefit from this intervention that we are doing. Going forward, we might expand it but this is what is obtainable for now,” she explained.
She further said the Ministry intended to handover the distribution of food relief items to State governments, so as to address the challenges associated with distribution faced in the past.
“So far, we have already done the distribution together with the State authorities in these two states affected by the lockdown, together with the FCT but going forward, when we are going to give these food items, we are going to hand them over to the States because issues have come up, as at yesterday (Monday).
” Our people were mobbed, some of them were attacked in the course of carrying out this assignment so the general conclusion is that we give this food relief directly to the State governments for them to distribute to the beneficiaries,” she said.
Shedding more light on the N21 billion support given to Nigeria by the European Union to fight COVID-19, the Minister said the donation was coming in form of medical equipment and provision of structures that will help Nigeria fight the deadly disease.
“This donation is coming in kind basically by way of medical equipment and also some structure to be put in place as a response to this COVID-19 pandemic.
“In that intervention, there are also humanitarian issues that would be addressed. As you are aware, this is a health emergency but at the same time it is also a humanitarian emergency so the Ministry is going to come in here because we are to coordinate all humanitarian interventions coming into the country by way of making sure that such interventions get to the poor and vulnerable in our society,” she added.
