By PATRICK OCHOGA, Benin City
Team Kogi contingent to the ongoing 20th National Sports Festival tagged Edo 2020 Games has undergone Covid-19 test and given a clean bill of health to the dreaded virus.
All the 41 athletes and 35 officials of Kogi State contingent tested negative to COVID-19 after the rigorous test conducted by the officials of the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), a situation which seemingly confirms Gov. Yahaya Bello’s insistent stance that there is no COVID-19 in the confluence state.
Recall since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Kogi State has had a series of face-offs with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). While the NCDC insisted that there were possible cases of COVID-19 in the state, Gov. Bello maintained that the state was free from the virus.
Kogi State is the only state in Nigeria that did not institute the universal mask wearing mandate, especially after the state Gov. Yahaya Bello was caught on tape saying ‘’we ain’t got no COVID”.
Kogi state neither declared a lockdown nor shut down its economy, as Gov. Bello insisted that he would not sanction any directive that will bring untold hardship to his people.
So far, Kogi has only 5 recorded cases of COVID 19 and zero deaths, a position which the NCDC insists is occasioned by lack of adequate testing in the state.
However, the state counters the position of the NCDC, stressing that even when officials of the Centre visited the state for four weeks, it found nothing.
It was against this background that the closer than usual spotlight put on the Kogi State contingent to the ongoing Edo 2020 Games by the NCDC did not come as a surprise to journalists covering the event.
It was the 100% negative result for COVID-19 which the team members received that is now raising inconvenient questions such as could Yahaya Bello have been right all along? Should we have listened more to him?
