Kogi And NCDC Drama Continues As Officials Leave, Thereby Avoiding 14 Days Quarantine

The drama between the Kogi State government and Nigeria Centre for disease Control, NCDC, may not end anytime soon as officials of NCDC fled Kogi State after governor Yahaya Bello ordered them to go into isolation for 14 days and be tested before they will be able to carry out their assignment in the state.

The officials of NCDC who were not comfortable with the directive of the Kogi State Governor left the state immediately the Governor gave the order on Thursday in Lokoja.

This happened barely one week after the NCDC and Kogi State government were involved in media altercations over the claim of Kogi state government that the state is COVID-19 free and the claim of NCDC that Kogi state government has refused to submit samples for test.

The recent drama ensued when the NCDC team led by Dr. Andrew Noah visited Governor Yahaya Bello in Lokoja on Thursday in a bid to help the state on the ongoing efforts in the fight against coronavirus in the country.

Speaking on the reason for being in the state, Dr. Noah told Yahaya Bello that the NCDC team were in Kogi to support the state in shipping swabs and samples to ascertain the level of preparedness of Kogi State in the fight against COVID-19.

After declaring their intention of being in the state, Governor Yahaya Bello surprisingly directed that the NCDC team should be subjected to COVID-19 test and quarantined to ensure the laid down procedure of checkmating the spread of the deadly disease by NCDC is strictly followed.

In his address, Governor Yahaya Bello boasted that Kogi State is highly experienced in fighting infectious diseases such as Lassa fever, adding that the experience have been in use in the fight against COVID-19.

Bello further boasted that the people of Kogi State are adequately sensitised in all languages and location throughout the state about COVID-19.

He disclosed that the state Ministry of Health has deployed health personnel to all the 239 Wards of the State with two focal person in each ward who constantly sensitize the people on the danger of coronavirus and communicate news and rumour of the virus to the incident committee or task force for investigation.

Yahaya Bello also boasted that Kogi State was the first state in Nigeria to officially release a web application through which the general public used for self assessment on Covid-19 risk.

“We have had over 200,000 engagements with that app, over 14,000 completed self-assessments revealing scores of cases which required further investigation before Covid-19 could be ruled out",he said.

Bello reiterated that Kogi State cannot manufacture cases just to be counted amongst the states which have recorded COVID-19.

He revealed that as a Governor, he heard there are 'benefits' for having COVID-19 cases in the state, adding that he is not interested in such benefits.

While reacting to the decision of NCDC officials for evading quarantine and test, Kogi State Commissioner for Information and Communication, Kingsley Fanwo, said the NCDC must come hard on their officials to show they are not hiding anything.

He said, the NCDC quarantined the Chinese professionals that came to give them technical support and took their samples for test, adding that it is a normal practice and guideline set by NCDC.

The Commissioner added that the NCDC will have to explain why its officials evade quarantine and test in Kogi State.