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