Cooperative alliance rallies over 40m members towards COVID-19

Medinat Kanabe

The consortium of International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) global; ICA Africa and member-countries of the cooperative movement across the five continents of the world are collecting reports from various member-countries to work out realistic measures to help governments in curbing the deadly COVID-19.

The President of the Cooperative Federation of Nigeria (CFN) who also is the President of Lagos State Cooperative Federation (LASCOFED), Chief Oriyomi Ayeola revealed in an exclusive interview weekend.

He said that because of the restriction in movement imposed by the pandemic, it has become inevitable and imperative to send reports on-line as demanded, to the world headquarters of cooperative movement at Gilgali, where they will be collated, interpreted and transmitted to head of governments of countries on safety measures, as an aspect of contributions from the movement.

He explained that from the outset of the pandemic on February 27, he had issued strong statement to his over 40million members across the 37 states of Nigeria including Abuja, “to do everything possible to ensure strict observance of health rules from President Muhammadu Buhari and state governors as safeguards to stem spread of the deadly virus, including stay-at-home order.

“Since the founding fathers of cooperative movements in 1844 by the Equitable Pioneer Brothers, cooperatives had been known to be law abiding citizens and as such, Nigerian cooperators should not be an exemption to this rule, particularly at this trying moment.

“As it is an obvious fact that in every bad situation there is always an opportunity to exploit it for human advantages, I am using this opportunity to implore my members who are professionals particularly members of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC); colleges of Medicines; Chief Medical Directors of University College Hospitals and Pharmacists to go into research and come out with useful information; drugs, masks, sanitisers even temporal scanners called infrared thermometers and other materials that can help conquer the pandemic. This will be a plus for Nigeria because we have the wherewithal as a nation to do something on our own,” Ayeola said