HURIWA to Buhari: ‘Your COVID-19 containment strategy not working’

Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has called out President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s failure to activate workable strategy to contain, combat and flatten the curves of COVID-19 infection rate. 

The rights group warned against the hurried reopening of public and private schools even before any identifiable benchmarks to guide against widening spectre of the infections are met.

The body tasked Buhari to utilise the over $4.5b World Bank and International Monetary Funds loans recently obtained for COVID-19 to construct a world-class tertiary health facility in each of the six geopolitical zones and connect all the public schools in Nigeria to clean sources of water for the benefits of millions of the students and teachers to contain the spread COVID-19.

“Generation unborn will never forgive this government should it fritter on frivolities the huge indebtedness it has incurred from global funding institutions in the name of fighting Covid-19 disease in Nigeria without building world-class hospitals nor procure medical facilities and protection tools for frontline medical staff, who as we speak, have only just returned from a nationwide strike, due to government’s failure to pay their hazards allowances”. 

HURIWA condemned the government for abandoning local medical research institutes, which could have been deployed to search for homemade remedies for the coronavirus pandemic.

The Rights group said the president’s over-reliance on foreign money to combat COVID-19 disease in Nigeria is belittling and has presented the country in terrible shape, thereby consigning Nigeria to the backyard of international relevance.