COVID-19: Nigerians' Attitude Will Determine Fresh Lockdown –PTF

Amid the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 has said Nigerians compliance or non-compliance to COVID-19 protocols will determine if the Federal Government will impose a fresh lockdown or not.

The National Coordinator of the PTF, Dr Sani Aliyu disclosed this while featuring on a television programme on Tuesday morning. 

Aliyu said no decision has been taken on a fresh lockdown yet, but public attitude will determine whether or not the task force would impose a fresh lockdown.

Aliyu said, “A lockdown is not going to be decided by the PTF but it is going to be decided by the behaviour of the public when it comes to these rules. We have countries abroad that have very strict non-pharmaceutical intervention measures and everybody follows it.

"The flights are coming in, schools are open, churches are open and they don’t have Covid problem because everybody observes the rules.

“We definitely don’t want a lockdown and because we don’t want to lock down, we need to make sure we do everything we can to prevent ourselves from reaching that state where the government will have to take action.”

Recall that the Federal Government had in March 2020 locked down the Federal Capital Territory as well as Lagos and Ogun States for over five weeks as part of measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic.

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The lockdown had a tremendous effect on economic activities with the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry putting the loss at about N3bn in the period under review.

Many jobs were also lost as airlines, hotels, banks, amongst others cut their workforce due to the crushing effect of the lockdown, while others cut their workers salaries in order for the company to keep running.