The Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) and Governor of Ekiti State, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, has held his first teleconference meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari where both leaders engaged each other on current issues of national importance.
Fayemi told the president that the two weeks extension of the lockdown in the FCT, Lagos and Ogun states even though tough, was “the right way to go”.
The NGF chairman further told the president that the targeted testing strategy adopted by the country has done a lot, however the Ekiti State Governor stated that there was need for more testing.
He added that the governors were desirous of having some more testing facilities so as to deepen the gains already made by the NCDC.
Fayemi briefed the President on the distribution of palliatives and urged him to instruct the relevant authorities to use the machineries of the state governments so that the palliatives would penetrate all nooks and crannies of the country. “Palliatives” the NGF Chairman explained, “would be even more meaningful if they were distributed through the state governors.”
Fayemi told Buhari that since the outbreak of the pandemic, governors have been meeting on a regular basis and met four times over an initial span of 12 days.
Fayemi said that governors would be having their next and 5th Teleconference meeting tomorrow (15th April, 2020) to review the strategies so far put in place in their various states and apply peer learning mechanism to share experiences and collectively adopt areas of successes for the good of their citizens.
The Secretary to the Government of Federation (SGF), Mr. Boss Mustapha, the Coordinator of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, Dr. Sani Aliyu, would be joining the governors in today’s meeting, just as the CBN Governor, Aliko Dangote and Herbert Wigwe will all be addressing the governors at the meeting.
In previous meetings top government functionaries including the Ministers of Finance, Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, and the Minister for Communications and Digital Economy have all addressed governors at different times.
This Day