CITAD call on the FGN and State Governments to roll out comprehensive palliative measures to address the food needs of vulnerable groups

Since the outbreak of Corovirus in December 2019 in China, thousands of people are being dying with number of cases rising every day. As of yesterday the 29th of March, 2020 the number of cases in the world stands at 704,095 with 33,509 death recorded all over the world with Italy being with highest number of death cases followed by Spain. Even in the most developed countries in the world, the likes of the United States of America United Kingdom, French, Germany etc. hospitals and health worker are over stretched due to the number of cases that are increasing every day.

In Nigeria, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) yesterday on its twitter account at 9:39pm announced that the country has recorded another 14 new cases in the country, taking the number of confirmed cases to 111 and 1 fatality (may her soul rest in peace) and tracking 6000 persons of interest (people that came in contact with covid-19 patients). These number has raised a lot of questions among Nigeria due to the insufficient testing centres in the country.

Among the best strategies use by the affected countries to contain the spread of the disease is self-isolation and lockdown of cities which halts every economic activities in the affected areas. Countries all over the world are introducing social support programmes that will ease the hardship of the less privileged in the society and the terrible condition they will enter during this period. For example, America has already budgeted 2trillion dollars to be shared among the poor in the country on its efforts to support the poor people in the country. Yesterday President Muhammad Buhari has addressed the nation for the second term since the outbreak of covid-19 in December. Many people were expecting the president to announce such kind of gesture to the poor people who majority of them depend on daily income to feed themselves and their family but there was no such announcement.

It is based on this the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) call on Government at all level to come up with programmes that will ease the suffering of citizens and at the same time the well to do individuals in the country to support the needy in the their own ways as the country heads to total lockdown.