"Coronavirus cannot survive in Nigeria's hellfire temperature" - Ayade

Cross River State governor, Ben Ayade, says the coronavirus pandemic has become a business venture, and is being used to exploit Nigeria and other African countries..

While speaking during an interview on Channels Television on Thursday, May 21, Ayade said the test method lacks responsibility and reliability. He said,

"As a professor of science, I know that we're not customising the action plan that reflects our situation and originality. As a nation, you can't just throw money in the hands of manufacturers of test reagents just because you want to test. You only test when there's a suspicion that calls for concern."

The governor, elected for a second term last year, cast further doubt on the spread of the disease in Nigeria, repeating an already-disproved claim that the novel disease cannot survive in hot weather.

"Indeed, even our own temperature here is such that when you sneeze, if a virus escapes, it's escaping into hell fire because it can't stand the temperature of 32 degrees centigrade. Sometimes in Nigeria, we do up to 42 degrees," he said.

List of African countries with less COVID-19 Cases. 

The World Health Organisation has released an update on the number of Corona virus cases in Africa.  It said that Lesotho, Comoros, and Seychelles were countries currently with the lowest confirmed cases in Africa. 

Recently, Lesotho had only one confirmed case with zero death; Comoros had 11 reported cases and one death, while Seychelles recorded 11 confirmed cases with no death.

“There over 86,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases on the African continent – with more than 33,000 recoveries and 2,700 deaths,” it said.

The figures showed that South Africa, Algeria, and Nigeria have the highest reported cases in Africa.

According to the update, South Africa had 16,433 cases and 286 deaths followed by Algeria with 7,201 cases and 555 deaths, while Nigeria had 6,175 confirmed cases and 191 deaths.

It added that Ghana had 5, 735 reported cases and 29 deaths, while Cameroon recorded 3, 529 confirmed cases, and 140 deaths.

The WHO Regional Office for Africa in Brazzaville, Congo, gave the update on its official Twitter account, @WHOAFRO.

COVID-19 : Bauchi Emir cancels Sallah

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the horse parade is a tourism event organised by most the Emirs in the North, which attracts thousands of people during the sallah festivities.

Sulaiman said at the stakeholders’ meeting with the State government on Wednesday in Bauchi that the cancellation of the event was necessitated by the global Coronavirus pandemic.

He said the world was faced with the dreaded coronavirus disease which had caused untold hardship to the people.

“We will do everything possible to see that we stop the spread of the virus in our society. Therefore, the annual “ daushe” horse parade is cancelled to ensure adherence to social distancing and discourage all forms of social gathering in the state,” he said.