The Organised Private Sector Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID) has commenced distribution exercise.
The palliatives worth N23billion targets 10 million Nigerians.
Zouera Youssoufou, the CACOVID Administrator, made this known on Thursday.
President Muhammadu Buhari had in May approved the opening of five COVID-19 Donor Accounts.
In April, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) revealed that CACOVID donations had risen to N25.8 billion.
Youssoufou said the palliatives were to mitigate the effect of the coronavirus pandemic.
She gave the breakdown as 1.6 million households, amounting to 10 million people in 774 local government areas in 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
The official disclosed that CACOVID also raised money to increase testing capacity within the country.
“The coalition’s primary focus was to aid the Federal Government in the fight against COVID-19. We are turning our attention to offering reprieve to households who have been adversely affected by the scourge of the virus”, NAN quoted her as saying.
“Through this programme, we will be reducing the risk of a second viral wave by encouraging people to remain indoors rather than exposing themselves when seeking to provide food for themselves and their families. We worked with the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) to target the number of households based on the 2016 population survey,”
She announced that each family would get a 10kg bag of rice, a 5kg bag of garri or semolina depending on the location.
They will also get 20 pieces of pasta, two cartons of noodles, 5kg of sugar and 1kg of salt.
“We have started doing the flag off across the country. We have so far flagged off Edo, Bayelsa, Kano, Yobe, Delta and today, we are doing it in FCT and Sokoto”, the administrator added.
