Edo directs lawyers to challenge vaccination suit

• Obaseki threatens lockdown

• NGO kicks against compulsory jab

The Edo State Government has instructed its lawyers to pursue and challenge court orders from where they emanate and if necessary, at the appellate level, over compulsory vaccination of its citizens with COVID-19 vaccine.

Governor Godwin Obaseki, who stated this in a statement yesterday in Benin City, also affirmed the state government’s position as law-abiding.

The instruction to the lawyers followed an order by a High Court sitting in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, directing the government to maintain the status quo on the purported compulsory vaccination of its citizens with the COVID-19 vaccine.

Obaseki, at a news briefing in Benin yesterday, also threatened to impose lockdown, if residents failed to follow the directive and comply with COVID-19 protocols to halt the spread of the Delta variant of the pandemic.

The governor said: “To the best of our knowledge, the order is at best speculative and pre-emptive as the scheduled date for the commencement of the enforcement of the directive by the state government is the second week of September.

“It must be stated that there is an obvious misconception that the directive issued by government was to make vaccination compulsory for all citizens.

“Although the state governor, in truth, has the power to make such an order under the Gazetted Quarantine Regulations, this directive is actually only a denial of access to public places of persons who chose not to be vaccinated.

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“We believe government’s overriding concern is the safety and health of its citizens.

“We are currently confronted with a situation wherein the Case Positivity Rate (CPR) for COVID-19 hovers between 15 and 25 per cent as deaths are consistently being recorded daily from COVID-19, with unvaccinated persons accounting for 100 per cent of deaths in the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the state.”

Obaseki, therefore, said his administration “finds it strange that some persons in purported pursuit of their fundamental human rights would embark on litigation tourism outside of our state, seek to become a source of public health danger and put at risk the safety and health of the larger population”.

The state government, he said, owed it a sacred duty to the populace to take actions necessary to protect the health of the majority of the citizens with greater quantity of vaccines being secured for the use of the people of Edo State.

The governor said the government would keep pursuing all legal and administrative options available for the protection of the best interest of the good people of Edo State.

But, the Centre for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD), a non-governmental organisation (NGO), yesterday in Abuja, faulted the plan by the Edo State government to make COVID-19 vaccination compulsory.

Its Executive Director, Mr. David Anyaele, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), said that the move to make the vaccination compulsory was unacceptable.

Anyaele, however, said the proposed plan would not augur well with Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) who are confronted with barriers to accessing primary healthcare services.

“We are concerned about the governor’s directives restricting persons without COVID-19 certificate from public gatherings in the state.

“This is not well thought out recognising that there are still barriers that hinder many people from assessing health care services on equal basis with others.”