Kaduna Government Imposes Quarantine on the Whole State

Kaduna Government Imposes Quarantine on the Whole State

Thursday, March 26, 2020 9:46 pm


Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State

…order compels everyone to stay at home and all businesses, places of worship, event centres, markets, shops

The Kaduna State Government (KDSG) has invoked the Constitution, the Quarantine Act 1926 and the Public Health Law 1917 to declare Kaduna State a public health area and Covid-19 a dangerous infectious disease.

Therefore, a quarantine has been imposed on Kaduna State, effective by midnight today, Deputy Governor @DrHadiza Balarabe has announced in the third State Broadcast in four days and the second to be made by her.

Deputy Governor Hadiza Balarabe

The quarantine order compels everyone to stay at home and all businesses, places of worship, event centres, markets, shops and the like to close from midnight today until further notice. Weddings and all social gatherings are also prohibited.

Only persons working in the essential services such as health workers, the fire service and security personnel are exempted from the restriction of movement. Tankers conveying fuel to petrol stations are also permitted to move.

Given Kaduna’s status as a transport hub, vehicles traveling through the state to other states are permitted transit, provided that such vehicles ply only the Western bye-pass.

KDSG, in a release, said it “is grateful that the federal authorities have responded to Malam Nasir @elrufai’s persistent requests by suspending the Abuja-Kaduna train service. We expect that this service will not resume until the Covid-19 pandemic is declared over

“This quarantine will have consequences for everyone, more so for the vulnerable persons in our communities. As indicated in previous statements, the government is procuring food and other supplies, funded from its contingency budget, to mitigate the effect for such persons

“Supplies for vulnerable persons will be distributed in community clusters across identified parts of some urban local government areas in the state. This will be a grassroots exercise; people drawn from the target community will constitute the committee to manage the distribution

Kaduna does not have the human resources & the health facilities to cope with this pandemic should it spread through the towns & villages of our state. The struggles of countries with better health systems should offer a sobering lesson to anyone who seeks to minimise the danger

“This is not scaremongering. We are only observing our solemn obligation to let our people know the full facts, however unpleasant. It is much easier and cheaper to prevent this pandemic than to manage its spread and the suffering and death it could inflict on our citizens.

“Security agencies will arrest, detain and prosecute any person that violates these measures. Churches and mosques will be shut, there will be no congregational prayers or services of worship either within these places of worship or in their immediate outdoors…

“… The circumstances of the moment dictate that the worship of God must be conducted in the privacy of our homes, for now.

“Any place of worship, event centre or building that hosts social gatherings will be in violation of its term of grant and therefore risks forfeiting its title to the land and having the site of the offence removed in the public interest.

“This is a dangerous moment, and we cannot risk the lives of the many to indulge the delusions of a few.

“Please stay safe, stay home, save lives!!!”

 


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