Date: 2021-02-03

The Nigerian government on Monday declared 22 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in 13 states as those recording high cases of COVID-19 infection.

Nigeria has a total of 774 local governments in its 36 states.

The National Incident Manager (NIM) of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, Mukhtar Muhammad, while speaking at a PTF briefing, said the 22 LGAs were identified after critical analysis of the pandemic.

He said the LGAs, mostly in the state capitals, contributed over 95 per cent of new cases recorded in the last six weeks. Ngeria has recorded an average of over 1,000 daily cases in the last six weeks as the country experiences the second wave of the virus.

The 22 LGAs are: Nkanu West (Enugu); Abuja Municipal (FCT); Gwagwalada (FCT); Gombe (Gombe); Chikun (Kaduna); Kaduna North; Kaduna South; Nassarawa (Kano); Katsina (Katsina); Ilorin South (Kwara); Ilorin West (Kwara); Eti-Osa (Lagos); Ikeja (Lagos); Kosofe (Lagos); Lagos Mainland (Lagos); Keffi (Nasarawa); Lafia (Nasarawa); Ibadan North (Oyo); Jos North (Plateau); Jos South (Plateau); Port-Harcourt (Rivers); and Wamako (Sokoto).

Low testing

Mr Muhammed explained that some states are not producing data of people infected with the virus due to low or zero testing of suspected cases. He said such states are probably at much higher risk than the states that are currently known as high-burdened states.

"In addition to these, we have states where data is not coming forth. If we don’t test, your data will not be analysed and if your data is not analysed, we won’t know the level of the pandemic in your state," Mr Muhammed said.

"Notable among the states are Yobe, Jigawa, Zamfara and Kebbi and of course Kogi that has not been reporting at all."

Controversial Kogi

Mr Muhammed also said Kogi has been declared a high-risk state for refusing to acknowledge the existence of the disease. He noted that the Kogi government had failed to report testing, lacked isolation centres and therefore warned Nigerians to be weary of visiting the state.

"A state that is not testing at all is an absolute high risk for Nigerians to visit because, there is no testing facility and even if you fall sick, there is no isolation center and they don’t even acknowledge that the disease exists. So for that reason, we put that state at the top of high risk states," he said. Testing to detect, trace and isolate has been the technique for managing the pandemic. But Kogi, a state of almost 3.5 million people, had tested only 425 samples as of December 11, the national situational report published December 12 by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) showed.

The state governor, Yahaya Bello, has repeatedly made controversial and false statements about the coronavirus pandemic, a situation that pitted him against federal officials and health professionals. The governor had in one instance described the deadly disease as a hoax.

Despite glaring evidence of acute under-testing for coronavirus in Kogi, Mr Bello last December claimed a widespread testing campaign was undertaken in his state and nobody had been infected. "After the earlier misunderstanding we had with the federal health officials and the NCDC, we later allowed them to step in and test people," he said in an interview aired on Channels TV last December. Since the pandemic broke out in February 2020, Nigeria has carried out 1,302,410 tests of which over 131,000 cases have been found and a total of 104,989 patients have recovered across the country.

The fatalities in the country rose to 1,607 according to data released by the NCDC on Monday night.