By Adedapo Adesanya
The Victims Support Fund (VSF) has commenced the third phase of its intervention fund for victims of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria.
The initiative is aimed at targeting up to one million Nigerian homes which have been most affected by the pandemic, including the vulnerable and disadvantaged members of the community.
“We are targeting indigent and vulnerable households in the country, that is very important to us, and by the time we have done this intervention we will have over one million individuals who have been touched by the VSF interventions,” the Chairperson VSF Task Force on COVID-19, Mrs Toyosi Akerele-Ogunsuji, noted.
Mrs Ogunsuji disclosed that VSF will distribute several items to beneficiaries, including medical supplies, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and food items.
It was gathered that some of the items to be shared include 10kg rice, 10kg beans, 10kg maize/garri, 2kg salt, 4 litres of vegetable oil, medical consumables and hygiene materials.
Also, the group will provide Water Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) facilities in 54 schools across 18 states and 60,000 testing kits will be donated to the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
In the first phase of the initiative, the VSF Task Force on COVID 19 said it spent about N979.2 million and N875.0 million used for the second phase, while the on-going third phase is expected to gulp about N1.5 billion.
The VSF Covid 19 Task Force has worked with different state governments of the federation and some Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to identify and distribute the items to vulnerable households.
Some of the states include Adamawa, Borno, Yobe, Taraba, Lagos, Ogun, Enugu, Ekiti, Edo, Delta, Ebonyi, Zamfara, Kano, Katsina, Plateau, Benue, Niger, Kaduna States and the FCT.
Editor’s Note:
We have discovered that Nigerians do not need to apply to benefit from the VSF Covid 19 Task Force palliative. We sincerely apologise for our earlier report suggesting so.
Modupe Gbadeyanka