Publishing the names of individuals who benefitted from the palliatives disbursed to cushion the effects of national lockdown as a result of Coronavirus disease is against human dignity, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Sadiya Farouk, has said.
Mrs Farouk, said the above reason is why the federal government has refused to publicly publish names of the those who received government intervention.
She stated this while speaking during the press conference of the Presidential Task Force on Wednesday, adding that the government had the record of the beneficiaries of the conditional cash transfer programme and COVID-19 palliatives in states, local governments and communities.
“We are not going to do that. It is wrong to publish the names of cash palliatives beneficiaries to the public. It has a crime against human dignity. You don’t mock people we claim to help,” the minister said.
“We understand that the CSOs are demanding this for accountability sake, but we can tell you, we have records to back all our claims and it can be investigated. We traded the names from Federal level to state to local government and then to communities to identify the right people in need of the palliatives.
“We were given 70,000 metric tonnes of grains. As of today, we were able to deploy 9,320 metric tonnes of grains to these three affected areas. That is about 334 trucks. Fifty trucks are almost arriving Kano,” she said.
However, many people in difficult situations have not benefited from the scheme.
The government has come under intense criticism in recent days over the lack of transparency in the distribution of palliatives to states.
