Lockdown: Lagos denies biased distribution of relief items

The Lagos State Government says the distribution of palliatives has been based on its database, denying allegations that relief materials are not getting to the masses.

The Commissioner for Agriculture, Gbolahan Lawal, said the state government had been using data from the Lagos State Residents Registration Agency.

He spoke during the flag-off and handover of food and non-food items from the Victims Support Fund COVID-19 Taskforce to the state government.

Lawal said, “We got 25,000 households through the LASDRA database. From our data, 191,000 Lagosians are between the ages of 60 and above and we filtered the data and arrived at 25,000 people, who responded to our text messages and they all got our food packages.


“We have also reached out to about 5,000 people living with disabilities in our seven clusters of visual impairment, physical disabilities, albinism, dwarfism, and other clusters across the state. We have also reached out to riverine communities starting from Irewe in Ojo, Ogun in Epe and 116 riverine communities with more than 5,000 households. We have also selected groups, artisans, trade unions and others in the informal sectors and depend on daily wages through their leaders.”

Earlier, the chairperson of the Victims Support Fund COVID-19 Taskforce, Toyosi Akerele-Ogunsiji, said the group, which had focused on the north-east in the last five years, decided to target frontline COVID-19 states to assist people in coping with the effects of the lockdown.

“We know Lagos is at the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic and the cases keep increasing every day. We have been increasingly worried about how we can provide support for the state government to efficiently implement the lockdown order because we are concerned about the community transmission of coronavirus. If people are hungry, they will not stay at home and it will be hard to flatten the curve.

“We are donating 5,100 pieces each of 10 kilogrammes of rice, beans, garri, vegetable oil and salt and we are targeting 30,000 to 40,000 households across Lagos metropolis through 10 of our partner NGOs to reach the poor and vulnerable,” she added.

According to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, more than half of the over 1000 confirmed coronavirus cases in Nigeria were recorded in Lagos.

The state has also been on Federal-Government ordered lockdown since 11pm on March 30 as part of measures to halt the spread of the lethal infection.