Worried by the continued spike and upward swing in the number of people afflicted with the COVID-19 ailment in Nigeria, a civil rights advocacy group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to sack the Minister of Health and to reconstitute both the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 and the Nigerian Centre for Disease (NCDC).

This, it said, is with a view to bring in much more competent professionals to drive the process of scaling down the infection rates, ramp up testing capacity of the country and to begin the comprehensive overhaul of the tertiary health infrastructures across the six geopolitical zones of the country.

The rights group said countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia amongst others that have structures for combating the spread of the pandemic in their nations have recorded tremendous milestones in bringing down the curves and in ramping up the testing capacities of their countries in addition to the giant strides made in the fields of scientific research on possible cure and development of functional vaccines to combat the respiratory problems caused by COVID-19.

It lamented that in Nigeria, the bodies set up to drive the process of combating the COVID-19 ailment are more interested in spreading fear, panic and alarm and have done nothing to improve and scale up the capacities of the federal and state governments to battle the scourge.

“The clear majority of Nigerians have lost hope and faith on the PTF/NCDC and the Federal Ministry of Health and Nigerians are doubting their sincerity of purpose. Were they appointed to solve the problem of COVID-19 or were they enlisted to spread fear and tensions? Even the Madagascar’s organics donated to Nigeria have disappeared without trace.

In a media statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, after her emergency Board of Trustees' parley in Abuja, HURIWA said that by their own admissions, the Ministers of Health, the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 (PTF) and the NCDC have “spectacularly failed” to discharge their operational mandates despite the fact that the nation had had to go cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to collect a COVID-19 loan package of the princely sum of $3.5 billion and has raised over N20 billion internally from donors and corporate bodies.

“Therefore, the most logical thing to do is to sack these non-performing Nigerians so as to bring in much more dedicated, competent and honest Professionals who would work and would not just be transactional and are only focused on ramping up the false alarm rates of reeling out unverifiable figures to frighten the populace and to collect more money from the public treasury.

“HURIWA, just like Nigerians, is embarrassed to keep reading from the Federal Ministry of Health which says unabashedly that the increasing number of the Coronavirus infections in the country should be a warning that the fatality rate could rise. Dr Osagie Ehanire, Minister of Health, gave the warning at the PTF briefing on COVID-19 in the country on Thursday in Abuja.”

Only on June 11, the Federal Government had also raised alarm over rising cases of COVID-19 with spike in the number of confirmed cases, where number of recorded cases jumped to 663 on Tuesday just as Mr. Boss Mustapha, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and Chairman of the PTF on COVID-19, said Nigeria witnessed a spike in number of confirmed cases when the number of recorded cases jumped to 663 on June 9 and this number is a source of concern to the PTF.

“HURIWA is shocked that the Task Force had on June 8th raised alarm that state governments and Nigerians were not cooperating with the NCDC on testing for COVID-19.

“We are shocked that these appointees of government who should combat the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria are the same persons spreading ignorance and fear and are busy stating that nobody knew how long the pandemic would last just as Dr Ihekweazu said the pandemic was currently at community transmission level lamenting that Nigeria had so far carried out about 100,000 test, even though it has the capacity to carry out over 200,000 test per day at the moment.”

In the considered position of the rights group, since the task force on Covid-19 put in place by the President is still complaining that law enforcement agencies are not enforcing the inter-state travel restrictions and the NCDC set up by national law lacks the necessary mechanisms to win the trust of all the 36 states of the federation and Abuja to carry out a unified approach towards combating COVID-19, “the best step is to dissolve these failed entities and appoint fresh hands who will not play politics with the mandates of their offices but would use law based measures to check the widening spread of the Coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria.”