I am 100% healthy, won’t take COVID-19 vaccine – Gov Bello

The Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello, declared on Friday he would not receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

The Nigeria Governors Forum said on Thursday night that governors of the 36 states and their deputies would receive the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine on March 10.

The country received its first batch of 3.9 million doses of the vaccine on Wednesday.

Governor Bello has continued to describe the COVID-19 pandemic as a hoax.

In a video posted on his Facebook page on March 25 last year, the governor said 99 percent of the noise made about the pandemic was for political, economic, and financial gain.

Bello, who featured in a Channels Television’s programme, “Politics Today,” on Friday, insisted that there was nothing wrong with him medically and would not allow the people of Kogi State to be used as “guinea pigs.”

He said: “COVID-19 is not our business in Kogi State. We have more pertinent issues and more pertinent matters that we are attending to in Kogi State. Insecurity we met, we have tackled it and several others. Disunity we met on ground and we have united Kogi State today and not COVID-19.

“COVID-19 is just a minute aspect of what we are treating or handling in Kogi State. There have been outbreaks of Lassa fever and Yellow fever and those were handled without making noise about it.

READ ALSO: COVID-19 vaccines, plot to introduce disease that’ll kill Nigerians —Gov Yahaya Bello

“During the last Yellow fever outbreak, we vaccinated our people against the disease. We encouraged them, educated them and they felt the impact. If the Federal Government is gracious enough and gives us COVID-19 vaccines, we will equally sensitise our people, people who wish to come and take can come and take but I am not going to subject the people of Kogi State to vaccines or vaccination and I will not make them the guinea pigs.

“As far as I am concerned, I don’t need to take vaccines. There is nothing wrong with me, I am hale and hearty. I am 100 percent healthy, I won’t take any vaccine.

“However, Mr. President is the leader of this country, I respect him so high and all of us respect him so much. We love him and he is leading by example. If he needs to take the vaccines and he takes it, it is a welcome development.”

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