Nigeria’s Minister
of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, has revealed that he has denied five governors flight
approval, since the closure of the airports and the lockdown order by President
Muhammadu Buhari to curb the COVID-19 outbreak.
According to Sirika,
three out of the four governors are members of the All Progressives Congress
(APC).
Two of the governors
are from the South-east, two from South-south, while one was from
North-central.
Sirika disclosed this
in Abuja on Tuesday, at the daily press briefing by members of the Presidential
Task Force on COVID-19.
“Every single flight
that we approved and will be approved will be an essential flight and 98
percent of the essential flight will be connected to COVID-19.
“A few of them,
maybe 1 percent may be either repatriation, requests from the diplomatic
community, which must go through foreign affairs, or repatriation due to
illness of another kind which will be medical-kind and those evacuations will
also need a stamp of a teaching hospital.
“However, I want to
share with you a discussion I had on Twitter with someone when I said we will
not be able to open our airports and airspace as a result of the extension of
the lockdown for normal operations and someone said; “Kindly stop all the VIPs
shuttle going on. It makes no sense to lock citizens up and allow governors to
stroll in and out of Abuja. In the first instance, they carried this virus into
Nigeria and now running around is not Okay.” I said to the person that I agree
with him but whatever is approved or whoever is approved to fly privately,
governor or no governor is on an essential flight and it is addition and 98
percent is related to COVID-19.
“There is no
exception to governors. I have denied several of such flights. Including two
governors from South-south, two from South-east and by the way, three of them
are members of the APC and I think one is from North-central.
“For a flight to be
approved, it shows that it is diligently done. It must be essential, COVID-19
related or other essential flights like cargo that will bring in medicines or
equipment or other things related to COVID-19 or our whole well-being like
food.
“Please trust us and
bear with us for this period but it will end soon by God’s grace,” he said.
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