Nigerian Govt gives condition for fresh lockdown

The Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, has said that the compliance level of Nigerians will determine whether a fresh lockdown will be imposed, amid the second wave of the pandemic.

PTF National Coordinator, Dr Sani Aliyu, stated this while featuring on TVC on Tuesday.

Aliyu insisted that no decision has been made on a fresh lockdown.

“The behaviour of the public when it comes to these rules matters. We have countries abroad that have very strict non-pharmaceutical intervention measures and everybody follows it.

“The flights are coming in, schools are open, churches are open, and they don’t have COVID-19 problems because everybody observes the rules.

“We definitely don’t want a lockdown and because we don’t want to lock down, we need to make sure we do everything we can to prevent ourselves from reaching that state where the government will have to take action,” he said.

The Federal Government ordered a lockdown in March 2020 in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja, Lagos and Ogun States for over five weeks during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It led to job losses as airlines, hotels, banks, among others cut their workforce due to the crushing economic effect of the lockdown.

Last week, the federal government admitted it would have no choice than to impose a fresh lockdown in the country, if the number of COVID-19 infections continues to spike.