Release relief materials to avoid hunger, Arewa United urges FG
The federal government has been called upon to ensure even distribution of COVID-19 relief materials to the grassroot in order not to increase hunger virus in the country.
Alhaji Ado Dansudu, national president, Arewa United Consultative Forum and national vice chairman, Arewa Youth Development Association of Nigeria, who made this call in an interview with journalists in Lagos, said the call became necessary following the spate of robberies in the state as a result of hunger due to the lockdown by the government.
He noted that if the situation was not well handled by the government, it will lead to uncontrollable crimes in the country, saying that the lockdown has made everybody to be a refugee in the country
Dansudu said relief materials should be distributed by government to every citizen in order to alleviate the sufferings of the masses and further reduce crime rate in the state
“I want government to consider the homeless and areas boys in their relief package; thugs and others, they should find a way to feed them too because if they are hungry, they will cause a lot of problems
“Even now there are areas you cannot pass around 7pm and 8pm. If they do not do anything about it, there will be problem in the community; these people should be taken care of properly.
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“For people to stay at home without fear and move freely within their areas, the homeless and area boys must be taken care of,” Dansudu asserted.
He observed that the relief materials sent to Lagos state were not enough to serve a local government area, saying, that every household should benefit from the palliative of the federal government.
“The food government says they have distributed is not enough; the 150 trailers they say they are giving is not even enough for Lagos state alone, at least every family is supposed to get a bag of rice, they should distribute the rice in line with the population.
“If there is no food, there will be problem and if coronavirus does not kill, hunger virus will kill, poverty virus will kill.
“If there is a family and the head has nothing to offer to a family, he may have high blood pressure that might lead to death. Government needs to work hard to help the masses so that at least they can buy garri a day,” he added.
He noted that the price of food items have become expensive because most of the states where food are sourced for onward movement to Lagos are also on lockdown, adding that this had also led to increase in transportation
Alhaji Dansusu assured that they had a meeting with their members to ensure that they do not make life difficult for Nigerians by increasing the prices of goods in this trying period.
“The price you are buying beans is not different from the price you were buying it before the lockdown, but l am sad that the price of garri has gone up; we are buying garri before N300-N350, but is now N700, a 100 per cent increase. Tomatoes and pepper is still cheap,” the state.
Dansudu however, commended the various government for the steps taken so far to contain the pandemic and urged Nigerians to follow all directives from the government in order to remain safe.
He declared that it was better to obey government on the issue of the coronavirus and stay alive than to die in ignorance of the disease, stressing that they have been enforcing the social distancing, washing of hands and providing sanitizers even though social distancing was difficult to enforce in markets .
“We have sanitizers, they use it when they come to the market; we do it three times a day. We do not have face masks and it is difficult to get. If we have everybody must put it on. Social distancing in the market is difficult as people are moving around buying and selling,” he argued.
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