Kunle Adelabu
Hon. Wasiu Agoro, the Chairman of the Imota Local Council Development Area (LCDA) on Thursday (yesterday) charged residents of the state, especially people in Imota part of Ikorodu Division of Lagos State, Southwest Nigeria, that they must comply strictly with the government’s and experts’ restriction as one of the measures to stop the spread of the deadly Coronavirus.
The Chairman, who stated that the disease should be taken seriously because of its spread and new revelation by the World Health Organisation (WHO), spoke with our reporter at the council secretariat on Thursday.
“We should take the issue of coronavirus seriously. We are in a very precarious situation now. Just today, I read WHO’s report stating that coronavirus is airborne which experts have been denying before. This means that we have to double our efforts”, the worried council chairman stated.
“There is need for total compliance to all the directives. In our council, we are going to double our efforts in making sure that people stay in their various houses. There should be no gathering.
“In view of recent information, I am sure that the state government would review the number of people can gather in a place. We can see that confirmed cases are increasing day-by-day. No one is safe.
“I am imploring everybody to comply with experts’ directive on the issue”.
Hon. Agoro, while stating that it was tough initially to make residents comply with the restriction order, revealed that the complaint level by residents to the precautionary directives has reduced.
“We have been complying with the directive from the state governor, Mr Babaide Sanwo-Olu, that partial lockdown must be observed in every part of the state, Imota LCDA inclusive”, he said.
“We are seeing this kind of situation for the first time and it took our people a while to come to term with it. But right now, our people have been complying with the directive. At the beginning, it was a bit tough for us.
“They started complying after lots of sensitization. The situation has really improved a lot. They are now following the experts’ and state government’s directives.
He stated that social workers have been going from street-to-street to educate people on the danger posed by the disease and the need to comply with directives.
He also stated that social media platforms have also been used to reach residents on how to contain the spread of the disease.
“Presently, we have been sensitizing the public on the danger of the virus ravaging the whole world.
“Imota been a rural area, what we have been doing is to go out from street-to-street with our public address system to sensitise the public.
“We have been using our social workers to sentise the locals to enable them to be aware of the directives of the state government and follow them.
“We have started that for the past one week and still ongoing. We have also been using other news medium, especially social media platforms to reach our people.
While citing the pronouncement of WHO on the disease, Hon. Agoro called for total compliance and stringent measures to safeguard lives by preventing the spread of the virus.
