Food
COVID-19 palliative looting: We do not have authority to distribute without approval from Abuja – Osun committee explains
Angry youths in the early hours of Friday broke into a warehouse in Ede town and carted away COVID-19 palliatives believing them to be hoarded.
Items such as beans, noodles, sugar, salt, garri, rice, pastas, vegetable oil, among others, were looted from the warehouse located within the moribund Cocoa Industry, Ede.
This happened barely 24-hours after the state government announced the suspension of dusk-till-dawn curfew imposed following the #EndSARS protest.
The Osun Food and Relief Committee on COVID-19 reacting in a statement on Friday in Osogbo, said the looted items at the warehouse were not hoarded, but rather kept for the flag-off of the official distribution.
Secretary to the committee, Alhaji Bayo Jimoh, said the looted items were donated to the committee as palliatives to the people by Private Sector Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID).
The statement read partly, “We do not have the authority to distribute the food items without approval from Abuja.
Besides, the Committee is still expecting the rice component of the donated items, which is 40, 230 bags of 5kg.
All these are part of the reasons the items were still in the warehouse up till the time of the invasion.
“The following items were donated; Pasta FMN – 29, 992; Pasta OLAM -10, 282; Noodles- 80, 644; Garri -40, 322; Salt- 40, 320; and Sugar – 40, 227.
However, the rice components of the donated items are yet to be delivered until now.
The Committee wrote to CACOVID as recently as Sept. 28, 2020, reminding it of the rice component, which is yet to be delivered.
However, until this moment, we are yet to receive a response from CACOVID.
This is the truth about the status of the donated relief items until the unfortunate looting,” Jimoh said.
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