Ebola: Dangote Donates N150m

Ebola: Dangote Donates N150m

— Aug 15, 2014 

The Dangote Foundation has donated N150 million to the Ebola Emergency Operation Centre in Lagos.

Making the donation on behalf of Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Chief Executive Officer of the Foundation, Mrs. Adiembong Adage, said ‘the centre is a platform through which critical investment by government and private sector can be made towards curtailing this Ebola crisis.”

Mrs. Adage encouraged Nigerians to take personal responsibility of the situation and not to panic while making use of the relevant information that were being disseminated by the government.

Also in his contribution, the Information and Communications Minister, Mr. Labaran Maku thanked the Dangote foundation for the donation, ‘by donating 150 million, Dangote foundation has upped the game. We thank them for taking the first step,’ while calling on well-meaning Nigerians to show solidarity to the fight against Ebola.

He also slammed the foreign media who he said were bent on tarnishing the corporate image of Nigeria through the generalization of the Ebola spread in the country.

He said “Some media will quote that Ebola has killed over one thousand in West Africa while putting Nigeria in the figure.”

‘We have noticed two media houses in particular who have continuously refused to send the true picture of Ebola spread in Nigeria in spite of all our efforts to brief the media in very transparent manner. We have not hidden anything as far as this virus is concerned,’ he said.

He pointed out that ‘one of the media has particularly refused to report Ebola but to impugn on the integrity of Nigeria. They will use this unfortunate incident of Ebola to run down the corporate image of our country and our people.

‘If it continues, I can tell you that we are going to take measures. Let it not come to pass that you want to push us to the wall and exploit our magnanimity, our free democratic spirit to run down the image.’

Maku said was only the minister of Health that was empowered to announce any outbreak or new cases of the virus in order to guard against panic and erroneous reportage.