COVID-19 Restriction Violation: Prosecute SGF, Others Now – PDP Tells FCT
BY GRACE ANYANWU, ABUJA – The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has urged the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FACT) to as a matter of national importance, prosecute the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 pandemic, Boss Mustapha, on the violation of health safety and social restriction directives.
The SGF, Mr Boss Mustapha and other members of the Presidential Taskforce on COVID-19 were among several other government officials that attended the burial of the Late Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, Malam Abba Kyari at the Gudu cemetery, Abuja.
The Party noted that the apology tendered by Mustapha came only after widespread condemnation of the conduct of such government officials and other individuals at the funeral.
The PDP in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan, described as unfortunate that those who make and enforce rules over ordinary Nigerians were found directly violating the same rules with impunity, thereby compromising the efforts to check the spread of the pandemic in the country.
The PDP holds that the SGF and other government officials including PTF members ought to have shown respect to the memory of Mallam Kyari by conducting themselves in a manner that should have served as a guide to other Nigerians in the fight against COVID-19.
It therefore said; “This, therefore, is not an act that an apology by the SGF will serve as enough, as it does not drive home the issue at stake to the public as well as to government officials.
“Consequently, the PDP charges the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) authorities, in line with its actions against ordinary Nigerians who had flouted the rules, to immediately prosecute all government functionaries involved in this violation.
“Nigerians had all watched how the FCT prosecuted residents at various mobile courts across the territory. Justice would therefore only be done and of course, seen to have been done, if the FCT toes the same line in this instance.
“Nigeria as a nation is governed by the constitution in which all Nigerians are deemed equal before the law. Our officials must learn to respect rules made and enforced by them, particularly at this trying time,” it stressed.
The PDP however urged Nigerians not to allow this development to make them lose faith in the overall mutli-sectoral effort to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.
It also charged all citizens to redouble their efforts in adhering to the restriction order as well as health safety directives of social distancing and personal hygiene, adding that with the concerted effort of all, the nation will defeat the scourge.
