Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar has advised the Federal Government to temporarily ban all flights to and from the United Kingdom to prevent the newly detected strain of Covid-19 in that country from straying into Nigeria.
He advised that Nigeria should toe the line of other European leaders who had already placed a restriction on direct flights from the United Kingdom.
In a series of tweets on Sunday, Atiku said that if the federal government had heeded the advice of well meaning Nigerians, including himself, to shut down our borders during the first wave of the pandemic early in the year, the country would have been saved the needless deaths and disruptions of our health care system.
The statement reads: “The reason Nigeria took a harder than necessary hit during the first wave of the #Covid19 virus is that the Federal Government failed to heed the warnings of well-meaning Nigerians, like myself and others, to shut down our boarders once the virus became a pandemic. Hindsight is 20/20. Nevertheless, we must learn from history, or we stand the riks of repeating it.
“The new strain of Covid-19 that has erupted in the United Kingdom, and specifically, London, can add to Nigeria’s health emergency if we do not act with an abundance of caution and temporarily halt all flights to and from the UK until this new strain is brought under control.
“We must face the reality that our health sector is not sufficiently prepared to handle a sudden and unpredictable surge of this pandemic. We have already lost lives needlesly. We need not lose more.
“In the case if this virus, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
