The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) says, the World Health Organization (WHO) has NOT approved the use of Chloroquine for COVID-19 management.
Speaking via Twitter @NCDCgov, the NCDC warned:
“Scientists are working hard to confirm the safety of several drugs for this disease.
“Please DO NOT engage in self-medication. This will cause harm and can lead to death.”
By Bukola Olasanmi
The deadly Coronavirus or COVID-19 was predicted by an article published by the Jehovah’s Witness, a religious group, 15 years ago, in its magazine, Awake! But the world ignored the warning.
According to the article “The Next Global Epidemic, WHEN?” published in the December 22, 2005, edition of Awake!, the world was alerted that a pandemic virus might emerge in China or a nearby country in the future.
It also warned that it might emanate from an animal and could surface from antigens or virulence factors derived from animal influenza viruses.
The prediction, seen by some analysts as opportunistic, came two years after the end of another pandemic virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak that started in November 2002.
SARS was also a coronavirus, and it also jumped to people from animals in the wet markets.
SARS emerged in Guangdong and infected 8,098 people over the course of eight months, killing 774 Patients experienced fevers, headaches, and a type of deadly pneumonia that could cause respiratory failure.
Experts called SARS “the first pandemic of the 21st century,” since it spread across 29 countries. The disease hasn’t been seen in humans since July 2003.
The Awake magazine writer in predicting another virus quoted the medical journal, Vaccine, of 2003, which warned: “It has been 35 years since the last influenza pandemic, and the longest interval between pandemics recorded with certainty in 39 years. The pandemic virus may emerge in China or a nearby country and could surface from antigens or virulence factors derived from animal influenza viruses.
“It will spread rapidly throughout the world. Several waves of infection will occur. Morbidity will be extensive in all age groups, and there will be widespread disruption of social and economic activity in all countries. Excess mortality will be evident in most, if not all age groups. It is unlikely that health care systems in even the most economically developed countries will be able to adequately cope with the demand for health care services.”
True to this prediction, the influenza pandemic again began in China in December 2019, from where it has spread to other parts of the world.
The virus has presented huge problems to China and the World Health Organisation in its containment.
Thirty-three travellers stormed out of Golden Beach Hotel in Bijilo after they were sent there for coronavirus isolation.
The travellers who included Gambians and Senegalese jetted into the country from Birmingham, UK via InterAir on Wednesday.
Officials quickly put them in a bus and sent them to Golden Beach Hotel. The travellers which also included a Sierra Leonean who had a child who was disabled and mentally challenged, spent ‘a few’ hours there before storming out into society.
One of them told reporters: “We were not quarantined, if we were quarantined, it should have started at the airport. Because we were mingling with everybody even at the airport. So there was no quarantine, there was no procedure, there was no process.
“They didn’t take us to a hotel, they took us to a brothel. There’s a difference between a hotel and a brothel. A brothel is probably where you take prostitutes.
“They give us a place that was abandoned for months and months and they expected us to stay.
“They didn’t tell us anything, we had no communication from anybody, up until even now. There was no one there from the ministry of health or the government. No one spoke to us, nobody. There was nobody at the hotel when we got there. Basically, the Gambian government is incompetent.
“I am not gonna stay in a hotel where I feel more vulnerable than anything else because there is no process, there is no procedure. The beds have bedbugs on them. That place can give us coronavirus.”
…Call for appointment of new SA on Amnesty programme
The leaders of ex-agitators in the Niger Delta region have frowned at what they describe as negligence of their members by the Amnesty Programme Committee.
The ex-agitators said since President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated the Amnesty Committee, the leaders of the ex-agitators in the Niger Delta had not met with the Committee to chart way forward.
The ex-agitators’ leaders said currently, names were being sent for scholarships in various universities without them (ex-agitators leaders) being carried along.
The ex-militants also called on President Buhari to appoint a Special Adviser on Niger Delta to allow them have easy access to the Presidency.
Addressing journalists during a protest in Abuja, one of the leaders of the ex-agitators, General Aso Tambo said the protest was to send a signal to the committee to arrange a meeting with them as soon as possible.
General Tambo who is also the National Chairman to 6166 ex-agitators which formed the Presidential Amnesty phase 2, said the 30,000 ex-agitators were being sent to schools but the leaders of the program in the Niger Delta were not being carried along.
“What we want to do right here is to send a signal to the committee that as they are working, there are people that own this program, there are people that brought about the existence of this program, the people that were agitating in the Niger Delta creeks bearing firearms to ensure that our region is developed the way Lagos and Abuja is. Those where the people that the federal government negotiated with the offer of amnesty.
“The message we want to send across through this medium to the Committee is for them to book an audience for them to see with the leaders of the ex-agitators so that they can hear us out”, he noted.
He commended President Muhammadu Buhari on the creation of the Committee to investigate the Amnesty Office.
Another ex-agitators leader, General Olotu Wanemi said the Committee should as a matter of urgency arrange a meeting with the leaders of the ex-agitators because the program was designed for the ex-agitators.
He said over 90 per cent of the leaders of the ex-agitators and their followers were not those deployed to schools in the recent deployment.
“This Amnesty office was not just created like that, so many things happened, people died, there was marginalisation, fortunately this office has been created, we the ex-agitators do not know what is happening in the office, no inclusion in anything.
“Fortunately, there is a committee now managing our program for over a month now, we have not met with the committee which is very wrong.
“We do not see it as right thing for people managing your program, you don’t know them. Before now when we had a Special Assistant to the President of Amnesty, we channel our complaints through the office.
“Just of recent, they deployed some people to school and 90 per cent of the leaders and followers were not included, we are appealing, we don’t want to take the laws into our hands, that’s why we have been this patient” he said.
While appealing to the Committee to have audience with the leaders of ex-agitators, he called on President Buhari to appoint a new Special Adviser on Niger Delta so that they can always pass their complaints swiftly.
“We are begging the committee to call us as soon as possible so that things will go as expected.
“We have done everything possible to see the committee but they are not in the Amnesty Office, we were told they were at National Security Adviser office, we went there, serve them letter, the refused, and we have been making efforts to have audience with them because we are the owner of this program.
“When they called us from the creeks, the Federal government agreed with us that they would educate us and our followers, they have deployed some persons to schools, the Special Adviser was about to deploy some ex-agitators to school before he was removed.
“As I speak, the private universities that the Amnesty office is working with are now calling that they are waiting for these students to be deployed, unfortunately, there is no Special Adviser to send them.
“So, we are appealing with the committee to give us audience, we want to see them especially for this deployment, for these people to go to school because they said that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop, so we want them to be busy, studying so that they won’t think of going back to the creek”, he added.
The Lagos state Commissioner for Health, Professor Akin Abayomi, has confirmed four new cases of the COVID-19 pandemic in Lagos.
This development brings the total of 12 cases in the country.
The Health Commissioner confirmed the new cases at a news briefing on Thursday.
This comes barely one day after the Federal Ministry of Health confirmed five new cases of Coronavirus (COVID-19).
The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, confirming the news at a press briefing on Wednesday in Abuja, explained that out of the five new cases, three arrived from the United States while two came from the United Kingdom.
“We are still collating information on the travellers; two out of the three from the US are Nigerian, a mother and a 6-week old baby which makes it the youngest COVID-19 patient we have.
“The third is an American national, who crossed the land border to become the first COVID-19 case not arriving by air. The two cases from the UK are Nigerians”.
The Minister noted that a detailed travel history of each person is being compiled and contacts currently being traced, to identify persons who have recently been in contact with anyone.
Cites solidarity and health as a human right
A British cruise ship carrying five passengers who have tested positive for the Coronavirus is to dock in Cuba after being turned away by other countries. The MS Braemar, which is carrying six hundred passengers, most of whom are British, had been stranded at sea for two days while trying to find a country which would allow it to dock.
Several other countries and refused permission, causing the British government to request help from Cuba. The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement today which said that “Given the urgency of the situation and the risk to the life of sick people, the Cuban government has decided to allow the docking of this ship”.
The passengers will repatriated by air to the UK and their home countries. The Cuban government said: “These are times of solidarity, of understanding health as a human right, of reinforcing international cooperation to face our common challenges, values that are inherent in the humanistic practice of the Revolution and of our people.”
The Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai, has offered an explanation as to why troops of the Nigerian Army are regularly involved in several internal security operations across the country.
He said the dynamic and sophisticated nature of internal threats has brought about some peculiar challenges, which he noted has perpetually demanded that the military be continuously ingrained into internal security operations.
Buratai spoke at the National Defence College in Abuja, when he delivered a paper entitled, “Civil Military Relations: A new Paradigm of military engagement in Nigeria,” before the House of Representatives’ Committee on Defence.
The Army chief, represented by Major General Usman Shehu Muhammad, Chief of Civil-Military Affairs, pointed out that criminals, insurgents, armed bandits, and robbers are becoming more emboldened owing to numerous illicit acquisitions of heavier fire power to prosecute the nefarious activities which are inimical to personal and national security.
“There is the perceived challenges associated with the Nigeria Police Force who possesses limited firepower, comparable to these criminals.
“The aforementioned reason has further led to loss of confidence in the NPF to decisively restore law and order, especially during insurgency and armed banditry activities, hence the concerted calls for the involvement of the military in these operations,” he said.
Buratai, stressed the need for constitutional provisions for human rights, adding that members of the National Assembly have a special role in the promotion and protection of human rights.
His words: “Owing to its primary role in lawmaking, the legislature is the branch of government best placed to give effect to human rights, take practical measures to prevent abuses and to ensure that law provides practical means through which remedies may be sought for alleged violations.
“To this end, members of the National Assembly may influence policies and budgets at the national level, monitor policy implementation programmes at local levels, address the needs and concerns of their constituencies and act as a catalyst in the realisation of human rights domestically and internationally.”
The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai was conducted round to inspect some of the indigenous fighting equipment manufactured by Defence Industries Corpoation of Nigeria (DICON) in conjunction with Command Engineering Depot (CED)
At the ongoing ‘EXPO 2020’ organised by the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology in Abuja, where the Nigerian Army is featuring some locally made Combat and Support equipment including some military kits at the Technology and Innovation.
Some of the prominent exhibition inspected by Buratai were EZUGWU Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) amoured vehicles, Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) which comes in multiple configurations with specific built to meet a client’s need and mission purpose, Fabricated Mobile Drilling Machine in Operation, Infantry Patrol Vehicle, normally used for quick personnel insertion patrol and Special Forces related operations, amongst others.
Other exhibition stands inspected by Buratai include the Nigerian Army Farms and Ranches Limited (NAFRA) which showcased mobile bakery, fish feed, Bio Tea, Cassava flour, among others.
Buratai also visited the Nigerian Army Schools of Medical Sciences (NASMS), here these products were unveiled they include, Surgical/Orthopaedic processing, fabrication of Dental appliances, brewery and food Industries, including POP ceiling.
Gen Buratai also inspected , the Nigerian Army Systems Development Centre here some other products inspected include Under Vehicle Inspection Robot, Under Vehicle Inspection System, Mobil Combat Surveillance with Ballistic Helmet, and Fuel less Power Generator.
The Army Chief also visited some stands meant for the Nigerian Navy and Nigerian Air Force including other government agencies and private sectors where very strategic equipments were introduced.
This year’s EXPO 2020 had a theme Enhancing the growth of Diversified Economy through Science and Technology” which is aimed at highlighting the role of innovation in economic diversification, had many government and private organisations including the Nigerian army participatory in the programme.
Buratai was accompanied by top military officers, where a plethora of innovation and inventions were showcased to them.
The programme which started on Monday is expected to end on Friday.
By Bukola Olasanmi
The Central Bank of Nigeria on Wednesday announced a N1.1tn intervention fund to support critical sectors of the economy.
The CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele said this in a statement made available to journalists.
The governor in the statement said the out of the N1.1tn, about N1tn would be used to support the local manufacturing sector as well as boost import substitution.
He added that the balance of N100bn would be used to support the health authorities to ensure laboratories, researchers and innovators work with global scientists to patent and produce vaccines and test kits in Nigeria.
This, he said, was imperative following the Coronavirus pandemic, adding that the N100bn would enable the country prepare for any major crises ahead.
He said given the continuing impact of the disease on global supply chains, the CBN will increase its intervention in boosting the economy.
He said, “First the CBN is directing all Deposit Money Banks to increase their support to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.
“In local drug manufacturing, in increased bed count in hospitals across Nigeria, in funding intensive care as well as in training, laboratory testing, equipment and R&D.
“In addition to the N50bn soft loans to small businesses already announced, the CBN will increase its intervention by another N100bn in loans this year to support health authorities.
“Secondly, given the continuing impact of the disease on global supply chains, the CBN will increase its intervention in boosting local manufacturing and import substitution by another N1tn across all critical sectors of the economy.”
He said the management of the CBN will meet with the Bankers Committee this Saturday at 10.00 am to work out the modalities for the intervention.
The Lagos State Government, on Wednesday, banned all religious gathering with over 50 people within the state.
The decision was arrived at after a meeting of the Lagos State Government with religious bodies in the state.
The religious bodies include the Christian Association of Nigeria and Muslim leaders.
Details later…