THE Kogi State government has taken delivery of about 16, 900 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine despite unsubstantiated and false claims peddled by Governor Yahaya Bello about it.
According to the Executive Director of the Primary Health Care Development Agency in Kogi Abubakar Yakubu, who led a team to receive the vaccine on Monday, the vaccination was scheduled to start on Tuesday.
Yakubu said that the most awaited COVID-19 vaccine arrived Kogi from Abuja at about 7:40 pm, noting that the state was well prepared for it.
”We have about 16,900 doses of the vaccine, and by Tuesday, we hope to flag off the campaign in the Ministry of Health.
”The first line of recipients of the vaccine are the health workers which will be demonstrated on Tuesday by 12 noon at the ministry.
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“The vaccine administration will be followed by the frontline essential non-health workers like the Police, military, NSCDC, Customs men, among others,” Yakubu said
He added that the ministry intended to carry out the campaign as efficient as it could because the state was a bit behind schedule compared with other states, which had almost completed their 10 days mandatory campaign for the administration of the vaccine.
Yakubu noted that the state was initially expecting about 45, 000 doses of the vaccines from NPHCDA, which accounted for one per cent of the total population of Kogi State.
”But to our surprise, we are being supplied with 16,900 doses now, I think there will be further reconciliation to send the balance of the doses as soon as possible,” he said.
Bello’s many lies
Bello is one of the persons making bogus claims about coronavirus outbreak and lately discouraged vaccine use in the country.
The governor, in a widely circulating video seen by The ICIR, discouraged supporters present in the gathering from taking vaccines.
The governor, who did not provide any evidence to back up the claim made against COVID-19 vaccine, said: “They want to use the (COVID-19) vaccines to introduce the disease that will kill you and us. God forbid!”
He questioned why COVID-19 vaccines were being produced in less than one year. “There is no vaccine yet for HIV, malaria, cancer and for several diseases that are killing us… We should draw our minds back to what happened in Kano during the polio vaccines that crippled and killed our children. We have learned our lessons.”
“If they say they are taking the vaccines in the public, allow them take their vaccines. Do not say I said you should not take it, but if you want to take it, open your eyes before you take the vaccines,” he said.
Also, Bello, in a Channel’s TV programme last December, questioned the need for Nigeria to procure COVID-19 vaccine.
He also said that no one in Kogi State had tested positive to COVID-19 and that the virus did not exist in the state.
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