The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has upbraided the Federal Government for warning COVID-19 survivors to stop giving details of the drugs used for their treatment, so they don’t encourage self-medication, describing as unconstitutional.

According to the rights group, the action has further strengthened the conspiracy theories about the certainty of the rate of spread of COVID-19 in Nigeria, adding that “the statement is like telling the entire world that what the Presidential Task Force on the Coronavirus Pandemic in Nigeria has been doing is to engage in voodoo contrary to expectations of 21st century compliant scientific inquiries and research in line with best global practices.”

It condemned what it called the Federal Government’s “lacklustre and unscientific methods of handling the whole issues of containment, treatments and finding pragmatic cures to the dreaded COVID-19 ailment in the country,” stressing that “gagging citizens from disclosing their treatment regime whilst in the COVID-19 isolation centres amounts to curtailing their constitutionally guaranteed fundamental freedoms of expression and information as enshrined in the Nigerian constitution.”

HURIWA said there is heightened public cynicism about the handling of the pandemic by the Presidential Task Force dominated by politicians and persons not vast in the field of sciences.

HURIWA also condemned the decision of the Federal Government to proceed with the School Feeding Programme when the schools have been in vacation for two months due to the Coronavirus pandemic while describing the programme as a scam developed by officials to perfect corruption.

It said the “ill-intentioned decision” of the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management to proceed with the unscrupulous agenda of feeding school children now that all the schools have been closed for two months have contributed to stoking the embers of public cynicism on the commitment of the current government to battle the scourge of the increasingly disturbing COVID-19 phenomenon.

“A government that tries to gag the citizens to stop talking about how they become well again after suffering from the unfortunate affliction of COVID-19 and a government that against all rational opposition proceeded with the feeding of ghost pupils in the guise of school feeding programme has only succeeded in making people to have doubts regarding the combating of the Coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria given that corruption that has manifested in the implementation of the Social Investment Programme, including the ill-fated School Feeding Programme, have fed into the growing cynicism and doubts on the genuineness of the best efforts of government to contain and defeat the ravaging Coronavirus Pandemic In Nigeria.”

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