Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has advised the Federal Government to ban flights from the United Kingdom to Nigeria in order to reduce the chances of recording the new strain of Coronavirus Disease already being contended with by the country, especially in London.
The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party for the 2019 election gave the advice in a series of tweets on his Twitter handle on Sunday as the United Kingdom entered into a one month lockdown over the new COVID-19 strain.
Abubakar, who said one of the reasons Nigeria took a harder than necessary hit during the first wave of COVID-18 was the failure of the Federal Government to heed the warnings of well meaning Nigerians like himself, said it was better to prevent that cure.
He tweeted: “The reason Nigeria took a harder than necessary hit during the first wave of the #COVID19 virus is that the Federal Government failed to heed the warnings of well-meaning Nigerians, like myself and others, to shut down our borders once the virus became a pandemic.
“Hindsight is 20/20. Nevertheless, we must learn from history, or we stand the risk of repeating it.
“The new strain of COVID19 that has erupted in the United Kingdom, and specifically, London, can add to Nigeria’s health emergency if we do not act with an abundance of caution and temporarily halt all flights to and from the UK until this new strain is brought under control.
“Already, prudent nations are taking prompt action, and Nigeria must take necessary precautions due to the volume of air traffic between Nigerian airports and London, where this new strain has erupted.
“We must face the reality that our health sector is not sufficiently prepared to handle a sudden and unpredictable surge of this pandemic. We have already lost lives needlessly. We need not lose more.
“In the case of this virus, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”