- Says governors have no excuse for warehousing items meant for the moment
- It took #endSARS protest for people to locate food items meant for them in warehouse
Maduako Igbokwe l Sunday, November 01, 2020
UTURU, Abia, Nigeria – Founder and CEO of Gregory University Uturu (GUU), Abia State, Prof Gregory Ibe has called on federal government to investigate how state governors managed the one billion Naira and food items given them during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prof Gregory Ibe who is a chieftain of People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and one of the governorship aspirants under the platform of PDP in the state said the panel would help to unravel what happened with the palliatives given to governors and the subsequent breaking up of warehouses where palliatives were stored across the country during the EndSARS protest.
According to Prof Ibe, there is need for the federal government to properly investigate how the one billion Naira, food items and the additional funds from donors agencies given to state governors were used during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said the essence of government was for the welfare and good of the people, saying that it speaks volume if those items meant to soften the suffering of people were not distributed.
“Federal Government responded quickly and timely by releasingone billion Naira to each state governor, some bags of rice and some individuals also donated to states and federal government. If those items did not get to the people who actually needed them, it calls for setting up of panel of inquiry to investigate how they spent the resources made available to them during the period” he said .
According to Prof Ibe, the money provided to governors could comfortable provide enough molecular laboratories and food items for each state, noting that a molecular laboratory cannot cost more than N25 millions, if there was already a building in place.
He said that, with N100 million, each state could have built enough molecular laboratory to test everybody in each state and one billion naira provided could have gone a long way to give succor to the people.
According to him, if not for National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC),no state governor was able to build a single labs ,even with the money from Federal government and some donor agencies.
“When COVID-19 started federal government shared a lot of seized rice to state governments, which some states complained that they were not human friendly and yet some governors still shared to their people which they ate and did not die” he said .
He wondered why state governments could not share the palliatives items that were meant for moment, instead chose to keep them for further outbreak. He also described some of the excuses given by some state governments for not sharing the covid 19 palliatives as not tenable because the items were to solve immediate problems and not for storing for further outbreak.
“Why would the Governors store the items in warehouse, when people are suffering and it took the EndSARS protests for people to discover that there food items meant to remedy their suffering during the covid-19 pandemic” he said.