CoronaVirus Updates
BREAKING: Finally, Kogi State succumbs to COVID-19
BY NICHOLAS ABE
Kogi State, north central Nigeria, has at last succumbed to the rampaging global pandemic, coronavirus.
The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) Wednesday announced two index cases of the COVID-19 for Kogi, on a day the nation recorded 389 new cases.
The fall of Kogi State leaves Cross River as the last state standing, out of the 36 states of the federation.
Kogi had been mired in controversy over the state’s COVID-19 status. The state governor, Yahaya Bello, had been reported to have exhibited some hostility toward a team of NCDC officials who had gone to the state to help build its testing capacity. Bello was said to have insisted that the NCDC officials having come from Abuja which already have high number of confirmed cases of Coronavirus must be tested and quarantined for 14 days.
Bello had said: “The NCDC officials are here to help us build our testing capacity since they have come, we are going to work with them but after observing their own rules and regulations. Its either they go into quarantine for fourteen days after which they continue their job. Here, from the records given to me, we are Covid-19 free in Kogi State so if anybody coming to help us, we must know their status. We have our samples collection here; we have dozens of samples collections from NCDC too.
READ: Kogi State frowns at ‘pressure’ to declare COVID-19 cases
“We are going to take their samples including that of the DG Protocol who had contact with one of them, we are going to take his own sample too and then all of them will go into isolation, after 14 days they are free to come and do their job. Covid-19, as we are meant to believe, is a war and as far as the Commander-In-Chief that is leading the war against COVID-19. I must guide my troops very well and in guiding the troops, I must ensure that when the enemy which is Covid-19 is approaching, I should be able to defend my troops either to take them to take cover in the trenches or go into the bunker and then know what the COVID-19 is up to. It is part of the protocol that you should not go to where there are cases and that you don’t leave where there are cases for a place where there are no cases.”
It would be recalled that the Kogi State Government recently alleged that there were plans to ‘import’ cases of coronavirus into the state through illicit means. The government claimed the plan was part of an “unholy conspiracy to declare Covid-19 in all states of the federation.”