Jigawa Denies Sharing N192bn to Pregnant Women
By Aliyu Dangida
HOTPEN – The Jigawa state government has vehemently debunked rumour making the round in the media saying that the state has shared over N192 billion to pregnant women and lactating mothers in the state.
The media report according to the Executive Secretary of the State Rehabilitation Board, Dr Ibrahim Rabakaya is untrue and misinformed.
Dr. Rabakaya was reacting to a News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), report published on some online medium crediting the government of Jigawa state that it shared N192bn among pregnant and lactating mothers in the state.
According to him, “The whole annual budget of the Cash Transfer to Pregnant Women program stood at N600 million. I wonder where the reporter got his misleading information with that outrageous figure which are higher than the even state annual budget”.
Rabakaya explained that, the reporter who made the misleading report has just watched the presentation made during a learning workshop with Kaduna State team held in Kano and independently arrived to his wrong calculation of the actual amount of the fund disbursed.
He stated further that, the “Cash Transfer to pregnant women was initiated under the State Social Security program aimed at tackling child malnutrition and higher rate of maternal and child mortality in the state”.
He said “20 pregnant women were selected from each of 287 political wards in the state making a total of 5,740 beneficiaries who are receiving N4,000 monthly stipend”.
“We commenced the cash transfer in November last year 2021 and to date we have distributed N226,740,800.00 to the beneficiaries”
“This cash transfer, to pregnant women we copied it from the pilot project executed in three local government area of the state by Action Against Hunger (ACF) and we scaled it to all 27 LGAs”.
He further called on the general public to disregard the misleading story and use the present figure released, which is also available with Fidelity Bank for further clarification.
