Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello, on Thursday, accused politicians of toying with the lives of Nigerians amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bello spoke while receiving members of the Board of Trustees of Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation in his Lugard House office in Lokoja.
According to the governor, “Let us stop this game, Nigerians are suffering. Instead of the lockdown with its attendant negative effects on the people, why can’t we turn it to employment opportunities, providing clothes for face masks to be imported to those countries which have the disease?
“COVID-19 is not a new disease in our climate, we have our own way of treating it; that is what we should be exploiting rather than subjecting our people to hardship, hunger and starvation through the lockdown.”
He insisted that attributing the death of the late Chief Judge of Kogi State, Justice Nasir Ajana, to COVID-19 was wrong.
Bello said that the late jurist had been managing his health since 2016, adding that the complications that eventually led to his death resulted from his inability to access medical care due to the lockdown.
“We know his medical history, he was my brother. We know we have been managing him since 2016 but this time, he was completely isolated. No one was allowed to even speak to him until he passed away. We cannot afford to be playing games with lives of Nigerians, this must stop,” the Kogi governor said.