Abdullahi
Ganduje, governor of Kano state, has appealed for an urgent ease of the
14-day total lockdown the federal government imposed on the state.
Following
the rise in COVID-19 cases and the strange deaths in the state,
President Muhammadu Buhari had ordered a total lockdown in Kano which
took effect on Monday.
But the governor said it is important to
relax the lockdown for a while in order to ease the hardship in the
state, especially in the holy month of Ramadan.
Speaking on
Thursday at the government house where he inaugurated a panel of experts
to support the state task force technical committee, Ganduje said
government is expanding treatment centres for COVID-19.
“We would
engage the presidential task force on COVID-19 to seek permission to
relax the total lockdown imposed on Kano,” he said.
“We are
making this appeal on behalf of our people who are presently running out
of food items. We would love the federal government to relax the
lockdown for a period of time to enable people stock their homes,
especially now that majority of us are fasting. It will also ease the
economic hardship in the state.”
The panel led by Musa Borodo,
president of the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria, was
given the responsibility of developing strategy and supporting the state
task force on COVID-19 to adopt measures for checking the spread of the
virus.
Tijani Hussain, the state coordinator of the task force,
put the COVID-19 death toll in Kano at five, saying none of the deceased
died at the isolation centre.