CORONAVIRUS: Govt will not stop Nigerians from travelling to China —Lai Mohammed

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has revealed why the Federal Government of Nigeria led by President Muhammedu Buhari will not stop Nigerians from travelling to China amid the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus.

Speaking on Friday while addressing newsmen shortly after a meeting of the inter-ministerial and multi sectoral committee on coronavirus held at the Ministry of Health in Abuja, the minister said that rather than impose travel ban, there will be travel advisory to help Nigerians.

According to Lai, the travel advisory will help Nigerians who wish to visit China or any other country where coronavirus has manifested to do so without any strains to their health and wellbeing.

He said; “We know it is a bit difficult to ban people from travelling. “Another thing is that this is not a basis to stigmatise people who come from there. “Even if we have Nigerians who are there, unless they indicate interest that they want to come home, we can’t force them.

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“I know we have Nigerians in Wuhan; our Embassy in China has confirmed that we have about 16 Nigerians in Wuhan and they are in touch with them.

“They have, however, not indicated their interest to come home. They will, however, contact our embassy if they like to come home,” he said. The minister said there was a need for the general public to be enlightened and for Nigerians travelling to be absolutely transparent.

“We need a lot of public enlightenment. We need to let people who travel know that there is a need for absolute transparency and absolute honesty when they are filling out forms.

“Some people don’t take the forms seriously and they do mislead authorities when they are asked to declare their status.

“One of the major advantages of the declaration of global emergency for coronavirus by WHO is that they understand that combating it can be really expensive and there are states that cannot afford it.

“But there are partners that can help such countries. But right now, we are in the stage of working together inter-ministerially to make sure we address the epidemic,” he said.

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