COVID-19: We’re no more your frontliners, FG tells citizens

• says pandemic may overwhelm Nigeria’s health system
• suspends airline, pilot for conveying Naira Marley to Abuja

The Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 says it is no longer Nigerians’ frontliners in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Its chairman and Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, said this in Abuja yesterday at the briefing of the PTF.

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“If you listen to me conscientiously in the past four weeks, I’ve spoken about personal responsibility. We’re not your frontliners any more. The choice of whether you’ll get to the hospital is yours.

“We’ve got to a stage where no amount of enforcement will cut this tool for us. It’s the choices we make that will determine what will happen. The governments of sub-national will try to do their best, but it’s the choices of the people that’ll determine how effective that’ll be.

“We’re the only ones that can work assiduously to ensure we reduce the level of transmission now that it has been ceded in our own communities. Nobody should be deceived that Nigeria has reached the peak of the pandemic,” Mustapha said.

He warned: “COVID -19 is real and because restrictions have been lifted is not a licence for carelessness. Yes, we’ll return to a new normal, but not the normal of the past.

“My appeal is that honestly, where we’re now, it’s our individual, no collective responsibility, that’ll determine where we’re headed. Are figures going to rise? Yes, they’re. The quantum in which they rise is dependent on what we do.

“But as for the figures, we don’t want to delude anybody; they’ll rise. The quantum with which they’ll rise exponentially or gradually is dependent on what Nigerians do.

“If we decide to be careless because restrictions have been lifted, then we’ll have a peak because if we’re not careful it can overwhelm even our health infrastructure.”

Aviation Minister Hadi Sirika announced the suspension of the ExecuJet, the flight company that conveyed a Nigerian singer, Naira Marley, on Saturday, to perform at a concert in Abuja despite the interstate travel ban and social distancing rules aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19.

He said the company supplied false information to get approval.

He said the company would be fined and the flight captain sanctioned for providing false information.

Sirika said: “The flight was supposed to convey a judge, Hon. Justice Adefope Okoji, to Abuja and back to Lagos on official engagement.

“Going forward we’ll escalate the mechanisms we have in place, and we’ll be stricter in our approvals and enforcement going forward,” he said.

PTF National Coordinator, Sani Aliyu, said the FCT Administration would decide appropriate sanctions for Naira Marley. He also said the government would evacuate 1,000 Nigerians stranded abroad this week.