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General News of Saturday, 2 May 2020

Source: www.mynigeria.com

It's irresponsible to ease the lockdown - Sheik Gumi tells FG

Sheikh Ahmad Gumi Sheikh Ahmad Gumi

Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi has described as irresponsible the Federal Government's decision to ease the lockdown period while the country still battles coronavirus.

Recall that the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), announced that the lockdown period will be eased from May 4.

In a chat with New Telegraph, Sheikh Gumi stated that the decision is just an excuse for the government to run away from its responsibility of providing palliatives during a lockdown.

"The government is just running away from their responsibility. This is just the truth, people are locked down in hunger and the government is not ready to spend on the palliatives. So they are saying the best thing is let’s release you people; but this is suicide, it is suicidal, it is suicidal and I’m very sorry to say it is irresponsible.

Yes it is because of pressure and hunger, that is it. If not it is not right to do that. Even in China where they have controlled opening, like the schools they made every child to come with mask, there was serious testing and taking of people’s temperature before coming into the school. Can we afford to do that here? We cannot. And what we are afraid of is if there is community transmission, meaning that it is not only the man to man contact, but it comes into the community and it becomes endemic; then it is going to be seriously fatal and we pray it does not happen", he said.

Speaking further, he said,

"Sincerely, I’m not comfortable and I don’t really know the word to use in describing what is happening, either in regards to the government or the people. But let me talk about the government because the government has seen what it should do although it is trying to derail now. Government is trying to derail because of pressure, but the Nigerian populace is something else too.

People are behaving like a child you took to the hospital for injection and he is struggling and doing everything possible not to receive the injection. This is how Nigerians are behaving. You are trying to do what is good for them, but then they’re resisting. But also you cannot blame them, because they are hungry, left uneducated; they are not well informed, because even the clergy or the Mallams are not ready to explain to them the real situation of things. Even some of the rejections of the issues stemmed from what they heard from the clergymen, so I don’t really blame them. But the government is not doing enough".