‘COVID-19 is not a new disease in our climate’, the lockdown is needless — Governor Bello

Yahaya Bello, Kogi State Governor, on Thursday alleged that politicians were playing games with the lives of Nigerians through the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Bello, who stated this when the Board of Trustees of Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation visited him at the Government House in Lokoja, added that it was wrong for anyone to attribute the death of the Chief Judge of Kogi State, Justice Nasir Ajana, to COVID-19.

 

He said the late chief judge had been sick since 2016, adding that the complications that eventually led to his death were caused by the inability to see medical experts to attend to him due to the lockdown.

 

The Kogi State government and the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) had disagreed several times over the state’s COVID-19 status.

 

While the NCDC had confirmed four COVID-19 cases in Kogi, there were claims the state government deliberately frustrated the agency’s efforts in a bid to drive home its zero COVID-19 status claim.

 

Bello said: “Let us stop this game, Nigerians are suffering, instead of the lockdown with its attendant negative effects on the people, why can’t we turn it to employment opportunities and provide clothes for face masks to be imported to those countries who have the disease.

 

“COVID-19 is not a new disease in our climate. We have our own way of treating it, that is what we should be exploiting rather than subjecting our people to hardship, hunger, and starvation through the lockdown.”