The
Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, says the federal government
needs to re-engage the Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello so he can allow
officials of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, test
residents for COVID-19.
Recall that the NCDC officials sent to the State had returned to Abuja after Bello ordered them to go into isolation and take the COVID-19 test.
However, Ehanire said the federal government’s effort to support the State with regards to COVID-19 had failed.
The Minister spoke during the daily briefing by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in Abuja, yesterday.
He
said: “We tried to send a team of the Ministry of Health and the NCDC
into Kogi yesterday but there were some differences there to processes.
“This
will mean that we need to re-engage the state governor again and work
with him and his team to create the conditions to which the Ministry of
Health and the NCDC can complete their job.
“The
agreement we had with them after discussions with the Governors (Kogi
and Cross River) is that we should send a delegation to the states just
to validate the facts.
“Of course, we need that for our national
records and to be able to report to the world what the situation is in
our country because by now the whole world knows that we do not have any
record from these two states.”
Kogi and Cross River are the only two States yet to record an index case of COVID-19 since the pandemic broke out in Nigeria.