The Deputy minority leader House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Toby Okechukwu. Representing Aninri, Awgu and Oji-River Federal Constituency, earlier on the 28th of April on the floor of Green Chambers contributed to the motion on the urgent need for intervention in unexplained high fatalities in Kano state and testing across Nigeria. In his speech he made it clear that the Pandemic is world wide and no one is coming to our aid, we need to therefore device means on how to take charge of the situation.

Supporting the Motion, he said ”I must extend my deepest condolences of our colleagues and my constituent to the people of Kano State on the inexplicable and unexplained death in Kano.

We must be very clear that, it is Kano today but it could another state, but what we should not be waiting for is to wait for another state for the corona virus to escalate but we need to intervene. We have to be proactive and more importantly we need to get our messaging right. A situation where you have about 640 people that has died and you cannot explain it, it speaks to the absence of focus, the absence of leadership. If there is anything that is happening to our citizens, we should be able to know. Now we do not know if its the Cornonavirus, because some would associate it to Malaria while others associate it with other ailment but, the class of people, the age of people, that are dying in Kano cannot be explained otherwise.

i. We must get our people to know that this thing is real and we must do this in every corner of the federation.

ii. The fact that the isolation centre is not working in Kano, is a pointer to the fact that we cant get it right

iii. NCDC has to be proactive. How do you determine how people have died or affected when you’re not testing?

iv. It is better that we import test kits from China than Importing Chinese.

We need to know the things we need to do, we do not have to wait for a situation to escalate in a particular area before we intervene. We must deal with it, we must be united in this because its a threat and no one is coming to our aid”