Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar has advised that Nigerians must show unprecedented unity in order to overcome coronavirus.
He also advised that the government must be proactive and not resort to blame games but focus on containing the coronavirus.
The first case of the virus was confirmed by the Lagos State Government on Friday. According to reports, an Italian national, who came into the country on Tuesday on a business trip, had tested positive at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, and taken to the Infectious Disease Hospital (IDH) in Yaba.
Atiku in a statement released on Friday recalled that the country was able to overcome the Wild Ebola Virus with complete unity, solidarity and oneness of purpose.
“Now that Nigeria has had her first confirmed case of the Corona Virus infestation, via a citizen of Italy, who visited Lagos and Ogun states, I would want to offer my patriotic counsel to the government of General Muhammadu Buhari, on how best to tackle this issue.
“We must call upon our experience with the Wild Ebola Virus, of which we were the first nation in the world to defeat that scourge in 2014. How did Nigeria do it? We achieved it by showing unprecedented unity. The federal government of the day worked closely with the Lagos and Rivers state governments. There was complete unity, solidarity and oneness of purpose, which created the atmosphere that defeated that deadly infestation.
“I strongly counsel that any tendency to blame and point fingers must be temporarily, if not permanently, suspended. If fingers must be pointed, it must be to solutions.”
“Recently, we closed our borders as an act against economic sabotage. Perhaps now is the time to temporarily halt flights to and from any nation with a prevalence of this scourge. It is more important to secure human lives than to secure an economy. We also need to invest in early detection facilities at our airports.”
He, however, advised that Nigerians, whether at government or individual levels, should not panic.
“We have defeated Ebola before, and we can defeat this present predicament.
“This crisis is an opportunity to show that we are first and foremost Nigerians and that we have no other country but our dear fatherland, which we must work together to keep healthy and secure,” he said.
