FG Clears The Air on N10.6b Budget For COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution

The Federal Government has debunked the reports claiming it budgeted N10.6b to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine to the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Faisal Shuaib, dismissed the reports after a ceremony, where President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, yesterday, in Abuja, received the first doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

He said: “I’m hearing this from you for the first time. It doesn’t make any sense that on the one hand, we’ve communicated very clearly to Nigerians that CACOVID, a private sector initiative, has provided a cargo plane that will help deliver the vaccines from Abuja to all states that have functional airports.

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“For those that do not have functional airports, there is a delivery van that will convey the vaccines from those airports to the states without functionality. I do not see how that is going to cost N10b. So, there is no truth in that information..

“The only cost we’re going to incur is the cost of delivering the vaccines from any airport to nearby states that don’t have functional airports. Clearly, that cannot be N10.6b.”
Asked to reveal the actual cost, he said, “You can do the math on the back of an envelope and you know that it cannot be anything close to a billion naira.

“So, I believe that CACOVID has already identified that cost as something they are going to take off. I do not know how much it’s going to cost them, but that is something that they have already identified as a cost they will bear and we’re working together with them…”