The Nigeria Customs Service says it has so far distributed a total of 16, 947, 000 50kg bags of rice, 915 kegs of vegetable oil (25 litres each) and 242 bales of clothing materials to 428,000 children across 44 orphanage homes in Lagos alone.
National Public Relations Officer of Customs, Mr.Joseph Attah disclosed this in Lagos on Thursday.
In a statement sent to Shipping Position Daily, Attah said the orphanage homes include; Little Saints Orphanage home, Tender Hearts Children home, Sisters of Mother Theresa, Babs el Salam Orphanage among others.
He said the rice were distributed on a ratio of five bags per child.
In addition, he said that in order to ensure that the materials get to the place without diversion; Customs attach escort officers to the items and give landing certificates which would be signed by owners of the orphanage homes.
According the Chairman of the sub-Committee on the distribution of the items, Comptroller Yakubu Salihu, so far the response has been encouraging and the exercise is going on smoothly.
He assured that the ongoing distribution exercise will cover the four zones of the Service and it is expected to affect all identified and verified IDP camps and orphanages across the country.
Salihu said his team was put together by the Comptroller General of Customs, Col, Hameed Ibrahim Ali rtd to implement the Presidential directive to the Service to extend distribution of these essential items to less privileged and vulnerable Nigerians.
Speaking on the mode of distribution, Attach said "Before now, on Presidential directives, the National Logistics Committee have been distributing rice to the victims of Book Haram in the North East, right now the federal government has directed that Customs should extend distribution of seized rice and other perishables, be it vegetable oils, used clothing, shoes, bags and so on to orphanages and other IDPs across the country. We have started in Lagos with Zone 'A'
"What we are doing now is that we identify an orphanage, we send officers to go and confirm that it is actually registered, we verify it, we confirm the total number of children in that home, we come down here and we allocate"
"For instance we say, five bags per one person, this is the formulae we are adopting"
"To ensure that the materials get to the place without diversion, we attach escort officers and we give landing certificates. When they arrive there, the owner of that orphanage receives it and sign the landing certificate which the escort would return to us indicating that the materials reached destination" he said.
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