President Muhammadu Buhari has yesterday Monday directed that the easing of the gradual lockdown is still under observation and therefore should still be sustained for the next two weeks.
The gradual easing of the lockdown among others which were; curfew and restriction on inter-state travel except for essential services and movement of foodstuffs from one point to the other.
Buhari also directed that the total lockdown slammed on Kano state still be maintained.
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), who doubled as the Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on the COVID-19, Boss Mustapha issued this statement on behalf of the President during its usual daily briefing of the COVID-19 in Abuja.
Recall President Buhari had on April 27, directed a “phased and gradual easing” of the lockdown in the index states of the Lagos, Ogun and the FCT while declaring the nationwide curfew on May 4th as well as restricting the interstate travel.
The SGF explained that Mr President’s decision was informed after careful examining of the situation that easing the lockdown, for now, will be counter-productive to the effort put in place for containing the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
Mustapha urged all meaning Nigerians that greater sacrifice is required from them this time to salvage the country, and people should endeavour to exercise more patience with the opening of the economy as the country is not ripe for opening up.
The SGF while explaining the premise why the lockdown should be sustained said; “considering the science statistics and the lesson learned from the other part of the world as well as putting into cognisance our peculiarity considering the last two weeks.”
“For example, our surveillance, infection prevention and control activities identified nine high burden local government areas in the federation reporting a high number of cases and accounting for 51 per cent of the total number of infections in the country.
“We have also seen that though Nigeria’s caseload still lags behind several other countries, our large population and a relatively high degree of mobility and urbanisation (50 per cent) places us at an increased risk for high transmissibility.
Therefore, our consideration of ease of restrictions has to balance lives and livelihoods and the slow and gradual phased approach should be science and data-driven,” he said.
Meanwhile, the SGF said the President directed that the current level of eased lockdown should be maintained from midnight of Monday, May 18 to June 1st, 2020, saying this would include the usual 8 pm to 6 am nationwide curfew that has since been in force.
He added, “The two weeks extension of phase one of the eased restriction is also to enable other segments of the economy to prepare adequately for compliance with the guidelines, preparatory to reopening in the coming weeks.