Nigeria opposition party, The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has urged President Buhari to immediately constitute an ‘Eminent Nigerians Group’ to manage donations from the private sector and palliatives from the Federal Government to cushion effect of COVID-19 in Nigeria.
The party said employing eminent Nigerians to manage the funds would help ensure that such interventions reached the desired persons in the overall effort to check the health and economic impact of COVID-19 in the country.
The party said the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 should immediately hands off the management of palliatives so as to eliminate corruption as well as political and bureaucratic bottlenecks that would impede effective administration of the social panaceas to vulnerable Nigerians.
The party also expressed concerns that the Federal Government had so far failed to reach vulnerable Nigerians in the informal sector which had been crippled by lockdowns occasioned by the COVID-19.
“Our party is deeply worried about the cries of hungry children whose parents can no longer go out to provide for their families at this critical time,” the PDP said in a statement on Tuesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan.
“The PDP therefore holds that the situation at hand requires an urgent involvement of all Nigerians irrespective of political, ethnic or religious persuasion.
“It is a time we must bring in eminent Nigerians from the private sector to assist in developing and implementing operable target-specific strategies to reach the vulnerable Nigerians across all informal sectors of our economy.
“The party calls for special interventions for farmers as well as Nigerians involved in the production, distribution and marketing of perishable consumer items by undertaking emergency bulk purchase, storage initiatives as well as waivers on loans so as to check waste and buoy production.
“We also urge for strategic intervention for distressed Nigerians such as cab drivers, keke operators, traders and other small-scale entrepreneurs, who took bank loans for their enterprises, but have been grounded by COVID-19 pandemic,” the statement read.