Plateau State Governor and chairman, Northern Governors Forum, Lalong
By Raymond Gukas, Jos
As the COVID-19 infection in Nigeria continue to grow daily, northern governors are pushing for adequate testing centres and coordinated response to the pandemic.
The governors met via a teleconference under the aegies the Northern States Governor’s Forum, where they shared their experiences as it affects their respective states with a view to adopting a workable measure to deal with the situation.
Chaired by the Forum’s Chairman and Governor of Plateau State Simon Lalong, the meeting received reports from various states and resolved to strengthen preventive measures against the pandemic.
The Plateau State governor’s press director, Simon Macham Makut who confirmed this in a press release added that the forum also resolved to “enhanced border controls and surveillance as well as greater collaboration to ensure that there is synergy among them in movement restriction.”
The Forum further noted that so far, the lockdown in some states in the region has had varying levels of success, but also raised concerns that enforcing cross-border movements remains a challenge as some of the cases recorded in some States were imported from outside despite the closure of borders by states.
“They agreed that at the moment, each State would adopt the measure suitable to its setting because total lockdown of the region will come at a very high cost since most of its citizens are farmers who need to go to farms since the rains have started.
“Another issue discussed by the Northern Governors was the issue of palliatives from the Federal Government where they regretted that so far, no state in the region has received a dime as special allocation despite the fact that some of them have recorded cases while others are making frantic efforts to prevent any outbreak as well as prepare against any eventuality”, it stated.
The meeting mandated the Chairman to liaise with the Federal Government through the Minister of Finance, Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 and the Private Sector donor basket in order to benefit from available palliatives and donations as they observed their various efforts have eaten deep into their pockets.
“The Governors also discussed the economic impact of Covid-19 on the region and decided that they needed to take a wholistic look at the economic prospects of the region with a view to repositioning it for less reliance on Federation Allocation and to prepare for the future by diversifying to areas of comparative advantage such as agriculture, manufacturing, tourism and human capital development,” it stressed.
At the end, a 7-man committee chaired by Governor of Kebbi State Atiku Abubakar Bagudu was set up to fashion out the way forward. Other members are Governors of Kaduna, Sokoto, Kwara, Nasarawa, Jigawa and Gombe states.
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