President Muhammadu Buhari has urged Nigerians to abide strictly by COVID-19 protocols as the country cannot afford a fresh lockdown.
He made the appeal in a Thursday tweet on his verified Twitter handle @Mbuhari.
The president described the nation’s economy as “fragile” and unable to bear the implications of a rise in COVID-19 cases.
Buhari tweeted, “Looking at the trends in other countries, we must do all we can to avert a second wave of COVID-19 in Nigeria.
“We must make sure that our cases, which have gone down, do not rise again. Our economy is too fragile to bear another round of lockdown.”
See tweet:
Looking at the trends in the other countries, we must do all we can to avert a second wave of Covid-19 in Nigeria. We must make sure that our cases, which have gone down, do not rise again. Our economy is too fragile to bear another round of lockdown.
— Muhammadu Buhari (@MBuhari) October 29, 2020
Buhari imposed a total lockdown on some parts of the country – Lagos, Ogun and FCT – in March to control growing spread of the pandemic in Nigeria.
The total lockdown that lasted five weeks caused Nigeria’s GDP to suffer a 34.1 percent loss, amounting to USD 16 billion, with two-thirds of the losses coming from the services sector, according to a working paper published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
The Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 has regularly charged Nigerians to wear face mask in public, observe social distancing and wash hands at intervals to keep the disease at bay.
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