How Northern governors are responding to rising cases of COVID-19 in the region.
As the confirmed cases of COVID-19 keeps increasing in Nigeria, many states and regions are beginning to take extra precautions to contain the spread of the virus. With the high rate in Kano and rising cases in most parts of the North, the Northern governors have decided to develop a reliable framework to prevent the situation from spiraling out of control.
This is coming after the governors initially announced that they were not keen on carrying out a lockdown in their states. One of the reasons for this decision was that it is a farming season and the region whose people are mostly farmers cannot afford to stay at home.
However, the Chairman of the Northern Governors Forum, Simon Lalong of Plateau state organized a virtual meeting on April 22 to discuss the region’s preventive measures against the spread of Coronavirus.
The Governors at the end of the meeting decided to allow each state to plan and implement its COVID-19 management protocols independently. They unanimously agreed to ban the Almajiri system in all 19 states of the region and evacuate the street children to their parents or states of origin.
They also requested that the Federal Government provide palliatives, special funding, and testing centres to support the region against the pandemic.
A statement released by Lalong’s Director of Press and Public Affairs, Dr. Machan Makut reads:
“On border control and lockdown measures, the Northern Governors retained their earlier decision for the states to individually decide on the measure to adopt, but reaffirmed the need for border closures to stop inter-state spread of the disease, which is rising in the region.
“The Governors also discussed the risk that Almajiri children are exposed to because of the Corona Virus disease where they unanimously decided to totally ban the Almajiri system.
“They vowed never to allow the system persist any longer because of the social challenges associated with it including the perpetuation of poverty, illiteracy, insecurity, and social disorder.”
Kano state which has seen a spike in the number of Coronavirus cases had already placed the state on a 7-day total lockdown after recording 73 cases.
