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No, Nigerian minister didn’t say 17.3 million children were fed as part of Covid-19 relief

“We have successfully fed 17.3 million children in their homes from 96 selected local government areas in Nigeria today the 14th of May 2020 and will continue with the program this weekend,” reads a quote in a graphic circulating on Facebook.

The quote is attributed to Sadiya Farouq, Nigeria’s minister of humanitarian affairs, and the graphic shows a photo of her.

It has been posted several times on a nearly 700,000-member Facebook group created to provide information about N-Power. The scheme is one of the social investment programmes overseen by Farouq’s ministry, which is also in charge of the government's Covid-19 relief.

The graphic has been shared from the group about 70 times, and has around 800 comments, many of them being disbelief. On the ABN TV page, the quote has been shared at least 55 times.

The ministry’s Home Grown School Feeding Programme was launched on 14 May. But did Farouq say 17.3 million children had been fed on the same day?



#FakeNews alert 


The programme, one of the ministry’s Covid-19 relief efforts, aims to continue a scheme to feed schoolchildren at home. It has targeted children in 3.1 million households.

On 16 May 2020, the ministry posted a screenshot of the quote on Twitter, stamped “FAKE NEWS”.

It tweeted, simply: “#FakeNews alert”. – Allwell Okpi




 

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