By Stephen Adeleye.
Kogi State Primary Health Care Development Agency (KSPHCDA) has debunked the online media report on the purported demand for money from clients by COVID-19 Administrators before administering the vaccine in the State.
An NGO, the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) in a purported press briefing in Bauchi State, had alleged that vaccine administrators in Kogi State were demanding money from clients before vaccinating them.
A statement by the Executive Director of the Agency, Dr Abubakar Yakubu, on Tuesday in Lokoja, described the purported report as misleading and far from the realities on COVID-19 vaccination in the state.
He stressed that the report was highly unlikely to be true as the NGO failed to back up its purported findings with the actual facts.and without using the appropriate channels.
He added that it was a known fact that the agency had been engaging in a high level social sensitisation and mobilisation advocacy across communities in the state in other to have an uptake of the vaccine.
”How can something we are practically persuading the people to take, will now be the same thing to be demanding for money before administering it. So, it is far from the reality,” the executive director queried.
The Executive Director further emphasised that the Agency had closely monitored the activities of the administrators vis-a-vis enlightenment to persuade the people across the State to take the COVID-19 vaccine, since the commencement of its administration in the State,
The KSPHCDA Boss added that the said discovery should have been addressed to the appropriate agency in the State rather than addressing newsmen in Bauchi State on a purported event that was claimed to have happened in Kogi State.
Yakubu maintained that the claim by the NGO was practically impossible to happen in Kogi State where the Agency and the State Ministry of Health were still doing a high level advocacy and community sensitization alongside relevant NGOs for COVID-19 vaccine uptake.
He, therefore described the report by CITAD of demanding for money for COVID-19 vaccination in any part of Kogi State as false, baseless and misleading with political undertone.
”The State Government completely reject the report and thereby demand for an immediate and unreserved apology from the publisher of the fake news as well as its generator, CITAD. Failure to tender their apology, the government would be forced to take punitive measures against NGO and its collaborators,” he said.
Meanwhile, Yakubu noted that the Agency had set up a team of investigators who are painstakingly analysing the purported report in order to expose the perpetrators as well as the motive behind their action.
Speaking to our Reporter, Mr Folayan Idowu, the State Coordinator National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), who doubles as a member of the State Joint Task Force on COVID-19 Vaccination, also refuted the purported publication, saying it was unfounded.
According to Idowu, the task force which comprised of the Agency and SMOH”s Staff, Security Personnel and Anti-corruption Agencies, had been embarking on weekly patrol to monitor the administration of COVID-19 vaccine across the 21 LGAs, insisting that there was no record of such incident.
However, the CITAD Online Media Coordinator in Kogi State, while speaking with our reporter, denied the knowledge of any demand for money before COVID-19 vaccination in the State.
