The Federal Government of Nigeria has ruled out the possibility of prohibiting foreign travellers from coming to Nigeria despite travel bans on the country by Canada, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
The government also stated that most of the in-bound passengers that tested positive for COVID-19 came from the UK.
Nigeria’s Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire made this known during Channels Television’s ‘Politics Today’ programme recently.
While talking during the television programme, Ehanire described the knee-jerk reaction of some countries to the Omicron strain as unfortunate. He stressed that the World Health Organisation even said recently that countries should pay more attention on collaboration rather than shutting borders.
He said: “At the moment we have no plans restricting anybody coming from another country.”
The UK recently announced that it discovered 21 cases of the omicron variant that were linked to Nigeria. It announced that all flights emanating from Nigeria would be restricted.
Also, the UK suspended every pending visa application in Nigeria due to the ban on flights from Nigeria over the Omicron variant.
In a statement, the commission said: “If you apply for a visit visa in a red list country and you meet the UK Immigration Rules, your application will be paused. You will not receive a decision on your visit visa application whilst red list travel restrictions remain in place. You will not be able to request a refund of your visa fee once you have given your biometrics at a Visa Application Centre. If you already hold a valid visit visa and are intending to travel to England as a visitor from a red list country, you will not be allowed to enter.”
But the Minister said the Omicron strain could not be declared as a deadly strain yet because no death cases had so far been recorded across the world.
He said: “We are watching what the science community is saying and of course not rushing to judgment and we are also not applauding any lockdowns or any prohibitions or banning of flights or movement of people until we know more.
“We believe that the harm it will do to livelihoods and economies may be more that the perceived value that will be derived from shutting movement between countries. I believe countries should come together to take a common approach and that includes the UK and other countries contemplating a red list.”.
When the Minister was asked why there was a huge number of outbound Nigerian passengers were testing positive abroad despite testing negative in Nigeria, he admitted that some fake test results were being presented by passengers.
The Minister however disclosed that the government had tightened its mechanism for detecting fake results and vaccination cards.
He argued that the development did not only occur in Nigeria and added that most of the inbound passengers that tested positive in Nigeria were from the UK.
He said: “Because of the very large volume of travellers from the UK, we also have the most positive COVID-19 virus coming from the UK too.”
