COVID-19: We should be your pride, not your shame - Cross River takes a swipe at FG

- Cross River state government has taken a swipe at the federal government amid the spread of COVID-19

- Dr. Betta Edu, the state commissioner for health expressed disappointment with the government's response in preventing the pandemic

- Cross River is the only state in the country that has no coronavirus case since the index case was confirmed in Nigeria

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Cross River government has taken a swipe at the federal government accusing it of not showing concern to the state amid the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria.

According to The Guardian, the state government expressed unhappiness the response attitude of the Nigerian government in assisting with fight against the pandemic.

Dr. Betta Edu, the state commissioner for health while briefing journalists on Friday, May 29, said that since the last visit of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) nothing has come out of it after they made a lot of promises.

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Edu, who also doubles as the Chairman, COVID-19 Response Team, urged President Muhammadu Buhari and the NCDC to support the prevention in Cross River saying: "disease control should be your pride and not your shame.”

The state commissioner went on to accuse the federal government of celebrating COVID-19 while people are dying of other dreaded diseases.

“It is sad to know that our country is refusing to support a state that has no coronavirus, I can’t just understand it. We have so magnified COVID-19 that health workers have allowed patients with other ailments to die. We are so glorified to hear every day that we have 500 cases, 350 cases and we celebrate it.

“Health workers are scared of going to work, malaria, high blood pressure and other ailments are killing over thousands in Nigeria, no one has called for press briefing to address them, so why are we celebrating COVID-19?”

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“As a state we will say we have had a good fight, now it is all up to the federal government to do the rest, maybe at that point, we will get support,”she said.

The federal health agency had visited the state a few weeks ago and promised to come back to upgrade the Lawrence Henshaw Infectious Disease Hospital (IDH) and the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH) to test centres among other things.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that a team of the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 which comprises experts from the Federal Ministry of Health and the NCDC visited Cross River to probe the coronavirus-free status of the state.

The team found out some key factors why the south-south state has not recorded a single case.

Similarly, Governor Ben Ayade enumerated some of the strategies used to ensure that Cross River state did not record any case of COVID-19.

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The governor disclosed this an interview that the state responded quickly to the pandemic by shutting its borders, closing airways and declaring ‘No Mask No Movement.’

“As soon as we started reading in the papers and watching on Television the impact of the pandemic globally, what we did as a state was to quickly respond to it by blocking our state against the virus," he said.

In a related development, there is an unfolding drama is Kogi as Governor Yahaya Bello-led government insisted that the north-central state is still free of coronavirus scourge despite fresh discovery.

The state's utter denial coincided with the report by Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) announcing two cases in the state.

Saka Haruna Audu, Kogi health commissioner, in a statement on Wednesday, May 27, said the state has conducted hundreds of Covid-19 tests out of which none came out positive.

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