Lai Mohammed denies reports members of the Presidential taskforce on COVID-19 receive N500k daily as sitting allowance

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has described
as fake news, reports making the rounds on social media that members of
the Presidential Taskforce on COVID-19 have been receiving N500,
000 daily as sitting allowance.

The Minister who spoke at a press briefing in Abuja on Wednesday,
said he was shocked when he heard the rumor. He said members of the team
have not received any allowance at all and that as a matter of
fact, they have been the ones using their own money to carry out
this National Assignment.

“The issue I want to take on is that of the sitting allowance of half
a million naira, paid to each of the members of the task force. You
will remember that each time I come here, since I tested negative for
Coronavirus, my other major problem has been fake news. As soon as I got
that information, I consulted with my colleagues here whether I’m not a
member of the task force and I asked them whether they’d received their
own and they said no.

What bothers me is that since about 2 O’clock this afternoon I’ve
been receiving text messages to send money to people; that they were
broke, they had no money and I began to wonder, why today? Apparently,
they are acting on this fake news that we receive half a million naira
everyday.

The truth of the matter is that no member of the committee has
received one penny, either for sitting or sleeping allowance, not even
when we went to Lagos yesterday. So, you see this fake news is targeted
at one thing alone: to distract the government from the more serious
problem and task of containing and combating fake news. I want to say
loud and clear; no member of the committee receives a penny as sitting
allowance. Everybody sacrificed his time, energy and even sometimes his
resources”, Mohammed said