Follow The Money initiative of Connected Development [CODE] has started monitoring activities around the 9.2 Billion Naira that was approved by the Federal Executive Council for the Ministry of Environment to procure and distribute 750,000 clean cookstoves and 18,000 Wonderbags.
The Chief Executive of CODE, Hamzat Lawal mentioned this in Abuja at a press briefing to launch the new public campaign which will monitor the procurement and distribution of the alternate cooking technologies that can reduce the numbers of women death from firewood cooking, and also reduce the illegal felling of trees.
?If we recall, on November 27, 2014, the Federal Executive Council approved the sum of nine billion, eighty seven million, two hundred and fifty thousand naira for the procurement of cookstoves and wonderbags by the Ministry of Environment, consequently as part of our strategies to make sure this incentives get and impactful to rural women it was meant for, we have sent out a request for information letter, according to the Freedom of Information Act to the Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Special Duties and the Integra Renewable Energy Limited, who got the procurement contract, seeking for the work plan and beneficiaries of this incentives, we hope they will respond within 7 days as stipulated by law in the 2011 Freedom of Information act? Hamzat said in a statement.
Hamzat said furthermore, this campaign is important because according the a report by the World Health Organization, over 95,000 Nigerian women die each year from exposure to household air pollution caused by cooking fires, and to us the government has taken the right step in the right direction. However, we would want to monitor activities around the procurement and distribution, making sure, the thousands of rural women, the new cooking technology is meant for gets access to it, as promised by the government within the stipulated time frame.
As it is important to build a larger evidence base for the campaign, it is already available on Follow The Money website at www.followthemoneyng.org and hopes to update every stakeholder and citizens of Nigeria and the world at large on how these funds translates or benefit rural women in the country.
