He said:
“I remember the speech he made to the traditional rulers in the state; he treated them like rascally schoolboys that you can talk to anyhow without any regard. That is his attitude, so I’m not really surprised.”
He accused the governor of Ignoring the authority of the federal government and behaving as if the federal government has no authority in the state. He said federal government has overriding authority both under the Quarantine Act of 1926. States can operate, provided they don’t clash with the federal government.
“So, the way Wike has been carrying on is as if there is a republic of Rivers state of which he is the President. He has done it so far and gotten away with it because the federal government is very accommodating. We have a President who is very gentle, who doesn’t want to make trouble with anybody but wants things to go on peacefully in the country.”
Sagay, SAN said Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State was wrong to have ordered the isolation of NCDC’s officials who came to ascertain the claim by the state to be COVID-19 free .
“That is a clear act of illegality. It is a clear case of provoking a more powerful entity than you and he got away with it. Even as a layman in medicine, nobody needs to tell me that Kogi state is probably full of COVID-19 infected people”.
To him, Yahaya Bello is covering up and behaving as if there is a prize he will win if he continues to say there is not a single case of COVID-19 in the state. “It is very childish and infantile act. Now, he is covering up but what it means is that when the thing spreads and death toll continues to rise like the case in Kano, then he will be overwhelmed and nobody will tell him before he crawls back to the federal government.”
He said federal government can send those NCDC officials back to Kogi state with full security and they will go in, do all the tests they want. Nobody will lift a finger against them, nobody will talk.
He said Kogi State is at the centre of Nigeria where everybody passes through. It doesn’t make sense to claim the state is free from the virus. That if proper testing is conducted by the NCDC, quite a number of cases will be found.
Prof. Sagay suspects the same situation in Cross River which is also claiming not to have a single case.
He said he wouldn’t blame Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu if the Governor re-imposes total lockdown in Lagos State.
“I won’t blame him. My only plea to him is to give us 48 hours so that we can all stock up foods. If he locks us up for another month or two, I will not blame him because Lagosians are behaving irresponsibly.”
He said had has been coming out these past four days to the office and he sees them all over the place. “More than 50 percent of them are not carrying any facemasks at all. Of the remaining 50 percent, half of them are carrying the facemasks under their chins; only 25 percent are wearing it properly. If you don’t cover the mouth and nose, you defeat the purpose because the idea is that those who are infected will be ejecting the virus from their mouth and nostrils on innocent people.”
He, however, blame Lagos State government for not making enough efforts to enforce its own Directives. People no more wear face masks, observe social distancing, commercial motorcycles (okada) have been riding in areas where they have been banned without anybody challenging them.