The Federal Government needs to clamp down on racketeers issuing fake vaccine cards to outbound travellers from Nigeria to developed countries, the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry has said.
The President, LCCI, Dr Michael Olawale-Cole, said on Thursday at a press briefing in Lagos that the government must take the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to make sustainable changes and improvements in the Nigerian healthcare sector and accelerate progress towards the achievement of universal health coverage.
He said, “We are obviously lagging behind our peers. While we agree with the Federal Government that the travel bans imposed on Nigeria are knee-jerk reactions, the Lagos chamber wishes to recommend to the Federal Government measures to sustainably manage the Omicron strain.
“The government needs to clamp down on any existing vaccine card racketeers who issue fake vaccination cards to outbound travellers from Nigeria to developed countries. Any trace of fake vaccination certificates to Nigeria is damaging to our international reputation.”×
According to him, the government needs to create an intelligene monitoring mechanism to check the utilisation of funds allocated to COVID-19 interventions.
Olawale-Cole said, “We would like to appeal to government at all levels to declare a state of emergency for the COVID-19 vaccine to be made available, easily accessible and administered to more Nigerians.
“This is very critical because the percentage of Nigerians that have taken the vaccine is very discouraging. Only about three per cent of the overall population of eligible persons are fully vaccinated. This is a far cry from the expected. If we fail to plan, we are already planning to fail.”
He said the government and citizens must work towards increasing the number of those vaccinated drastically in the next few months in order to avoid bearing the dire consequences.
Olawale-Cole said, “Recent statistics from Our World in Data indicate that as of December 2, the number of vaccines doses administered in Nigeria was 10.9 million, translating to about 1.8 per cent of the Nigerian population.
“South Africa as at December 5 has administered about 26.3 million (about 25 per cent of the population). Kenya has administered about 7.58 million (5.5 per cent of the population). Ghana’s vaccination statistics for total doses given stood at three to five million, translating to about 2.7 per cent of the population.”
He urged Nigerians and other nationals living in the country to comply with COVID-19 protocols.
“We must all work towards a safer Nigeria, Let us free our mind and stop being hesitant about taking the COVID-19 vaccine. The fear of dying after receiving the vaccine and other conspiracy theories should be perished,” he added.
