Kogi Denies Allegation of Demand for Gratification for COVID-19 Vaccination

Ibrahim Oyewale in Lokoja

The Kogi State Primary Health Care Development Agency (KSPHCDA) has denied the allegation that COVID-19 administrators in the state demanded for gratification from clients before administering the vaccine in the state.

KSPHCDA disclosed that the purported allegation was untrue and could be substantiated.

A Non-Governmental Organisation, the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD), in a press briefing in Bauchi State, had alleged that vaccine administrators in Kogi State were demanding money from clients before vaccinating them.

In a swift response by the Executive Director of the KSPHCDA, Dr. Abubakar Yakubu, yesterday in Lokoja, said the purported report was 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 facts.

Yakubu claimed that the agency had been sensitising and mobilising communities in the state 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?’’ the executive director queried.

He 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 high-level advocacy and community sensitisation alongside relevant NGOs for COVID-19 vaccine uptake.

He, therefore, described the report by CITAD of demanding money for COVID-19 vaccination in any part of Kogi State as false, baseless and misleading with a political undertone.

‘’The state government completely rejects the report and thereby demands 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.