Were I in President Buhari’s shoes I would use that EU €50m grant to hand out these emergency packs to residents of states under lockdown

By Ayo Akinfe

(1) Yesterday, it emerged that the European Union (EU) gave Nigeria €50m towards fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. As has been the case with all the other private donations the federal government has received, we have not been told what this money will be used for

(2) As we all know, there are a whole host of challenges facing us right now in Nigeria. Food scarcity, a lack of ventilators, inadequate facemasks, a shortage of drugs, etc are all obstacles the government has to overcome. With our economy totally crippled due to the collapse of the global crude oil market, there is fire on the mountain. Our government simply lacks the resources to address all these issues

(3) As of now, the three biggest parts of the nation under economic siege are the Federal Capital Territory and Lagos and Ogun states that are under a total lockdown. They were locked down for 14 days originally and this lockdown has been extended by another 14 days. They desperately need economic relief if we seriously want people they to obey the directive and stay at home

(4) Nigeria’s urban economies are dominated by petty artisans like tradesmen, retailers, market women, blue collar guilds men and women like mechanics, carpenters, vulcanisers, etc. These people exist on a day-to-day basis, earning a daily income, so asking them to remain out of work for a month is demanding a lot. A robust compensation programme needs to be put in place to make them obey any stay-at-home order

(5) Above everything else, preventing people from starving has got to be a top priority. I have thus put together an emergency food hamper, which I believe should be immediately distributed to all families in the FCT and Lagos and Ogun states. I suspect the EU’s €50m should just about stretch far enough to cover these three territories

(6) This my emergency pack contains:
(1) One pack of 5kg of rice
(2) One pack of 5kg of gari
(3) One pack of 5kg of beans
(4) Two 5kg tubers of yam
(5) Two 600-gram loaves of bread
(6) One five litre bottle of cooking oil
(7) One crate of 30 eggs
(8) One 400-gram tin of powdered milk
(9) Six bottles of 1.5 litres of water
(10) Four 400-gram tins of tomatoes

(7) I take the view that this pack should be adopted as standard by the Nigerian Emergency Management Agency (Nema) and be brought out whenever we have any emergency be it a flood, fire, bomb blast, terrorist attack etc. Basically, once a disaster is declared an emergency, it should automatically trigger their release to families in the affected area

(8) Our government will have to safeguard these packs against corruption and theft, so every item needs to be marked Not for Sale. They should also be contained in a standard hamper. We should use this as an opportunity to revive the wicker basket-making industry in the Niger Delta

(9) Our Niger Delta wicker makers should be asked to produce at least 50m such hampers a year. Nema too must always have a minimum of 10m such hampers in stock with the capacity to increase this substantially within 24 hours

(10) From what we are currently witnessing, these hampers will have to be more widely distributed across Nigeria as even states with no Covid cases or lockdowns are desperate for food to feed their starving masses. With crude oil prices now crashing to a point of near valuelessness, just above production costs, I can see the food hamper becoming a major feature of the Nigerian economy over the next few years