International travellers try to circumvent Nigeria’s Covid-19 rules

Passengers on an international flight allegedly presented fake Covid-19 results upon their arrival to the country.

CAPE TOWN, September 16 (ANA) – Forty percent of the passengers on an international flight to Nigeria allegedly presented fake Covid-19 results upon their arrival to the country, according to the presidential task force (PTF) on Covid-19.

This Day newspaper reported that the national co-ordinator of the PTF, Sani Aliyu, disclosed the matter on Tuesday while speaking before a joint senate committee on health and aviation.

Aliyu said protocols were necessary in order to limit the possibility of importing more positive coronavirus cases into the country, This Day reported.

“When we started with the evacuation flights and special flights, the arrangement then was that people coming into the country will need to have negative Covid-19 test PCR (polymerase chain reaction) results, which have to be valid at the time – the seven days,” he said.

He explained that such occurrences needed to be avoided, adding that the PTF had held meetings with ambassadors of the affected countries which had issued the negative results to people flying into the country who were in fact positive, to determine the issue of the inaccurate results.

He added that the PTF would now change the validity period of test results to four days before passengers were due for arrival in the country, to intensify measures.

The chairman of the senate committee on health, senator Ibrahim Oloriegbe, expressed concern about the protocols for international flight operations in relation to Covid-19 test requirements.

“The issue is about the protocols that have been set up for testing of passengers, either intending to fly out of Nigeria or coming into Nigeria, and the challenges associated with it,” Oloriegbe said.

In its latest update, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control has recorded 56,478 cases of Covid-19, with 1,088 deaths and 44,430 recoveries.

– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Yaron Blecher