Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has advocated what it called a “national unified response” to the rampaging COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria with a view to finding local and indigenous panacea to the health emergency as well as open up the country to some forms of limited economic activities to stave off imminent national economic collapse should the total shutdown continue unabated.

Besides, the rights group said it was “unjust, inhumane, wicked, outrageous and Illegal” for President Muhammadu Buhari to supervise the ongoing lopsided re-distribution of the palliatives and reliefs made available by the Nigerian state for the benefit of all poor income families in Nigeria which ought to have been re-distributed equitably and equally.

It stated that the disclosure by the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs that the Northwest alone cornered more of the components of the national conditional cash transfer approved by the President to ameliorate the hardships faced by millions of poor households than the Southeast and South-South is another form of apartheid policy.

HURIWA said the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs must be called to order to stop the use of highly suspicious and unscientific indices to determine the rightful beneficiaries of the conditional cash transfer from the coffers of the Nigerian government to the Nigerian people.

It called for the forensic financial crimes investigations of the disbursement of the conditional cash transfer by the national office coordinating the Social Investment Programme which is under the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development.

HURIWA dismissed the model adopted by the Ministry that only those citizens with N5,000 in their bank accounts or those who load just N100 call-cards will be paid as “superficial and unscientific,” adding that “this is highly outrageous because there are very many poor people that have recently received assistance from kind-hearted Nigerians and may have even received recharge cards of above N1,000 as donations from some good-spirited individuals who are aware of their precarious financial predicament.

“So how do you judge or assess that poor family as comfortable only because such a bread winner of the family received some gifts that may not even last them more than two days if it is the case of families with over 5 children in a given household or even more children?"

The best approach, it said, is to adopt the measures used by either the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) or the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) in doing registration of voters or dropping and collecting payments for services rendered to Nigerians.

“The Federal Government needs to liaise with the states and the local councils and reach out to the wards and even the traditional institutions of autonomous communities and to be assisted by community-based, religious leaders and important stakeholders who would jointly compile the credible lists of poor Nigerians and distribute the cash through their confirmed BVN and account numbers. On the alternative, the Central Bank of Nigeria can work out a modality for those with no bank accounts to open their accounts using their mobile telephone numbers.

“The process of generating the data of poor families can well be derived directly from the ward level all across the nation and the payments must be made through their accounts and then publicized for vetting by Nigerians. This is how to promote transparency and accountability.”

HURIWA recalled that at the inception of the Coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria, the government decided to integrate the provisions of palliatives to the poor as part of the larger programme of the Social investment programme.

However this component and even the modality for arriving at the lists of the beneficiaries is hobbled by accusations of corruption with a ranking, Senator Ali Ndume, categorically accusing the officials of the Presidency responsible for the disbursement of the conditional cash transfer of manufacturing fake lists of beneficiaries.

HURIWA also asked the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to mobilize and harness the local talents and resources of indigenous scientists with a view to evolving a local solution to the COVID-19 pandemic so Nigeria can progressively open up her economic activities to avoid imminent collapse.

The rights group said most advanced societies in the West are already opening up their economies bit by bit because such countries meticulously follow through their home made national response mechanism to pandemic but lamented that the Nigerian Government engages in copying other nation's models which are not working which is why the cases are growing exponentially.

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