The Governor of Kano State, Abdullahi Ganduje, has appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to relax the 14-day total lockdown imposed on the state.
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During a nationwide broadcast on Monday, President Buhari ordered a total lockdown on Kano following the rise of COVID-19 cases and the strange deaths in the state.
While speaking, while inaugurating a panel of experts to support the state task force technical committee on Thursday, Ganduje, said that it is important to relax the lockdown for a while in order to cushion the effect of the pandemic in the state, especially as resident observe the holy month of Ramadan.
He said:
We would engage the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 to seek permission to relax the total lockdown imposed on Kano.
We are making this appeal on behalf of our people who are presently running out of food items. We would love the Federal government to relax the lockdown for a period of time to enable people stock their homes, especially now that majority of us are fasting. It will also ease the economic hardship in the state.
Also speaking at the event, the state coordinator of the task force, Tijani Hussain, puts the COVID-19 death toll in Kano at five, saying none of the deceased died at the state’s isolation centre.
Recently, the Northwestern state witnessed a wave of mysterious deaths; a development that has since sparked a series of reactions from Nigerians who slammed the Ganduje-led government.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Senior Special Assistant the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, said:
In Nigeria, currently verbal autopsies [gathering information about symptoms and circumstances for a deceased] are underway in Kano state to identify the precise cause of the sudden and rapid increase in mortality in recent days.
While some may wish to believe that there are other causes at play like hypertension, diabetes, meningitis, and acute malaria, there are others who say it is COVID-19.
Governor Ganduje, however, denied claims that mysterious deaths were recorded in the state.
