The Jigawa state government has debunked the publication by some online news papers which says the state has shared over N192 billion naira to pregnant women and lactating mothers in the state the govt described the story as distorted and misinformed.
The Executive Secretary of the state Rehabilitation Board Dr Ibrahim Rabakaya, who dismissed the report while speaking to newsmen in his office, said the whole annual budget of “Cash Transfer to Pregnant Women program is N600 million. “So I don’t know where the reporter got his story with that outrageous figure which are higher than the state annual budget” he stated.
Dr. Rabakaya explained that the reporter who made the wrong report has just watched the presentation he made during a learning workshop with Kaduna state team held in Kano state and independently arrived to his wrong calculation of the actual figure or amount of money distributed.
He further explained that, the “Cash Transfer” to pregnant women was initiated under the state Social Security program aims at tackling child malnutrition and higher rate of maternal mortality in the state.
According to him, 20 pregnant women where selected from each of 287 political wards in the state making total of 5,740 beneficiaries who are receiving N4,000 each monthly.
“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 LGA’s”
Meanwhile, he has called on general public to disregard the previous wrong information written by some online medium and use the present figure which is also available with Fidelity Bank for further verification.
