Fayemi cautions Yahaya Bello over COVID-19 vaccines

Ekiti State governor, Kayode Fayemi, has cautioned his Kogi State counterpart, Yahaya Bello, to not risk the lives of the citizens over his recent utterances concerning COVID-19 vaccines.

Newsflash had earlier reported that Governor Yahaya Bello had discouraged Nigerians from taking the approved COVID-19 vaccines by the Federal government, saying COVID-19 vaccines could be dangerous to the health.

Yahaya Bello in a video widely circulating on Facebook since Sunday morning could be seen discouraging a jeering crowd of supporters from taking the vaccines.

“…They want to use the (COVID-19) vaccines to introduce the disease that will kill you and us. God forbid!” Mr Bello said.

The governor hinged his criticism of the foremost COVID-19 vaccines currently being rolled out in nearly 50 countries globally on the breakneck speed at which they were developed.

“These vaccines are being produced in last than one year of COVID-19. 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. Don’t 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.

But Fayemi reacting to Governor Bello’s utterances said the Kogi governor should watch what he says in the public in order not risk the lives of the people.

It is no longer news that Nigeria is battling the more deadly second wave of the pandemic, with an average of 1,000 cases daily being announced by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC.

Nigerian authorities have also announced that the vaccine will soon arrive in the country, promising that whichever vaccines that are approved by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 will be safe for Nigerians.

But Bello has maintained that the COVID-19 vaccines being produced in less than one year were being used to introduce new diseases that will kill many, instead of being a source of healing.

However, appearing on Channels Television’s Politics Today, on Thursday, Fayemi urged the Kogi Governor to thread with care.

Fayemi warned that his Kogi counterpart must not risk the lives of the citizens.

He said “while the Kogi Governor has a right to his reservations, the most appropriate response to a matter of such import is not to be dismissive.”

Fayemi said the “preponderance at the level of the Nigerian Governors Forum believes that COVID-19 is real,” adding that “there is a need to respond to the challenges that have emanated from the pandemic.”

He said that COVID-19 is not just a health issue, adding that “it behooves public office holders to work in concert with the Federal Government to get to the bottom of the problem which is not peculiar to Nigeria.”

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