Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC)/Transparency International in Nigeria commends  appreciates the ongoing donations by indigenous groups towards the combating the COVID-2019 virus pandemic and its socio-economic impacts, and at the same time, call for total accountability of the utilisation and distribution of funds.

The Civil society in a statement signed by
Executive Director, Auwal Ibrahim Musa
welcomed the recent constitution of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 response with specific responsibility to coordinate donations for efficient and impactful spending, but expressed  surprise that selection and appointment into the Committee did not take cognisance of representatives from the media and other credible governmental and non-governmental organisations working on anti-corruption, transparency and accountability in governance and public financial management.

“In times of global public emergency, proactive measures to ensure judicious utilisation and distribution of these funds are needed more than ever. Inclusion of media and other accountability entities in the Committee would compel transparency and accountability in the utilisation and dissemination of managed funds. At this critical junction, Nigeria cannot afford mismanagement and misappropriation of public and donated funds.”

“We on this note have no hesitation to state that diversion or misappropriation of the funds would be tantamount to total betrayal, unpatriotic, unsympathetic and selfishness in the management of the nation’s treasury which are punishable under relevant laws.”

“While we monitor with keen interest response of various authorities to commitment of the Federal Government towards alleviating impacts of the newly pronounced lockdown in some states, we demand sincere effort to ensure relief materials and other financial and material assistance are deployed accordingly to citizens irrespective of their socio-economic status with holistic and transparent strategy to adequately appropriate relief package to citizens at the grassroots level.”

“We also observe that ongoing development has further revealed the government’s inadequate preparedness capacity to mitigate impacts of the pandemic and other national emergency with existing poor national storage capacity for food and other basic needs to respond adequately.”