Governor Seyi Makinde has announced that there will be no lockdown in the state as palliatives distribution commence this week.
According to him, the initial announcement made by the Commissioner for Special Duties that the State might order a two-day lockdown to restrict all kinds of movement during the distribution of palliatives was not made by him or members of the state COVID-19 taskforce but by a committee, the commissioner is a member of.
The governor, who disclosed this during a live call-in interview on Fresh FM earlier today, also insisted that the decision to order civil servants from level 13 and above to resume is in the best interest of the people of the state because the economic health of the state is as important as the public health.
While explaining the rationale behind the decision of the State government to order the resumption of workers despite the fact that the state is yet to reach a peak in the number of confirmed cases or experience a continuous fall in the number of confirmed cases, he said “I’ll leave the technical details to the expert, Isaac, but be assured that decisions were made from experts’ advice, and don’t forget that the Oyo state COVID-19 taskforce is made up of several professors, epidemiologists, virologists, and people with a background in health.
“As I have often said, we have to find a local solution. We can’t keep making reference that this United States of America, how about other parts of the world? You have to compare what people have done right. America should not always be the point of reference, there are other places in the world doing far better than America.
“We should only borrow from things that will work for us and that can come from any part of the world. It can come from as near as Ghana. Ghana has just lifted its lockdown, they are moving on with their life.”
When confronted with the question of whether it is logical to make the decisions that workers should resume work despite the fact that the state had only tested 610 samples as of yesterday out of a target of 10,000, he said:
“We will keep on testing, this (COVID-19) is not going to go away like yesterday and that is exactly what I have been telling a lot of people that.
“Okay, you have given palliatives out and this is the direction that you are going to go, in a manner that you are flipping a switch on and off. No, it’s not going to go that way. I think we need to look at this in terms of light dimmers where we can turn the nob and the light may be bright or you may turn the light.
“We are in this for a long haul and our output should not be like flipping a switch, our output will be with us for a while.
“And that is exactly what we are doing. I mean consciously we are going out saying let this category of people resume, let the market work, let the farmers take advantage of this planting season.”
He also begged the people of the state, especially the opposition, to shun the spread of false alarms because the state needs to build an economy that investors can trust.
He added that Amotekun will come on board soon to complement the efforts of security agencies in the state.
