Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Thursday said the country should start a discussion on how to ramp up capacity to be able to manufacture vaccines locally.
Nigeria – and most African countries – has been largely left behind compared to countries such as the US, UK, Russia, and China that have rolled out mass vaccination programmes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The country is expected to take delivery of some 100,000 vaccine shots by the end of January, but that is a drop in the ocean, in relation to the population.
Nigeria is estimated to be home to over 200 million people.
“We are at a point where we can gain tremendously as a people from this pandemic and a lot of what has been said will really help in putting this in perspective for us as government, so we can actually go out and resolve many of these problems and improve the environment for ourselves, and for the coming generations in particular,” Osinbajo said, as quoted in a statement released by his medi
Dr. Aliyu Sani
The federal government has said there will be repercussions for Very Important Personalities (VIPs) and government officials who flout travel protocols.
In a video posted by the Ministry of Information and Culture yesterday via Twitter, the National Coordinator of the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19, Dr Sani Aliyu, vowed to clamp down on officials for failing to obey travel protocols including undergoing compulsory COVID-19 tests after returning into the country.
“We want to change people’s behaviour. We’ve shown that we are going to do it. We have done it and we will continue to do it every week until things change. It is not like we want to punish people but if you continue to put our country at risk, we will take action,” he said.