“Shoot Covid-19 suspects down if…” Ebonyi Governor orders

Governor David Umahi:

By Ademola Adegbamigbe

Is the order by Ebonyi State Governor, David Umahi, a replay of the apocryphal report that North Korean authorities have been executing coronavirus patients? Or is  it like the other unsubstantiated report that President Vladimir Putin of Russia let loose 500 tigers to tear into pieces such patients who roam the streets? No!

However, the Ebonyi Governor actually ordered that some Coronavirus “suspects” be shot on sight by security agents. Without playing the devil’s advocate, there was actually a context to that order.

Here is how…

Trust Nigerians who have the penchant to circumvent any order, however good intentioned. After the state government closed its borders so that human vectors would not bring coronavirus into Ebonyi, certain individuals, with the knowledge of the geography of their ancestral land, made use of the bush paths to beat that order. 

They were only wiser by half, though! Security personnel nabbed 37 of them and took them straight into quarantine.

As reported by The Guardian, “But no fewer than 30 persons were said to have entered the bush and crossed to a boundary town between Abakaliki and Enugu where vehicles were already on standby to carry them to their various destinations.

The 30 escapees and seven returnees were later taken to a quarantine centre at the Abakaliki Township Stadium where Umahi visited them at 9 pm and ordered that they are subjected to a daily medical examination for 14-days.”

In anger, the Governor said that “any of the returnees that try to escape from the quarantine centre where they would be subjected to medical tests daily for 14 days following Coronavirus pandemic should be shot on sight.”