Gov denies sharing N193bn cash to pregnant women in seven months

The Jigawa State Governor, Alhaji Muhammadu Badaru Abubakar dismissed a media report saying the state government shared N193 billion in seven months to state’s pregnant and lactating women, saying the N193 billion sharing to pregnant and lactating women is not true.

The governor made the denial through the Executive Secretary of the state Rehabilitation Board Dr Ibrahim Rabakaya while speaking to newsmen in his office, denied the media report (Not Tribune Online) which says the state has shared over N192 billion to pregnant women and lactating mothers in the state described the story as “distorted and misinformed.”

Mr Rabakaya explained that “The whole annual budget of the “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 is higher than the state annual budget”.

According to him, he was miscounted by the reporter during his presentation made at a learning workshop with the Kaduna state team held in Kano state and independently arrived at his wrong calculation of the actual figure or amount of money distributed.

The ES narrated that, the “Cash Transfer” to pregnant women was initiated under the state Social Security program aims at tackling child malnutrition and a higher rate of maternal and child mortality in the state.

He added that 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.

“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 from the pilot project executed in three local government areas of the state by Action Against Hunger (ACF) and we scaled it to all 27 LGAs”

Dr Rabakaya then called on the general public to disregard the previous wrong information and use the present figure he gave, which is also available with Fidelity Bank for further verification.

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