Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, on Monday warned the Chief Medical Director of the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Professor Henry Ugboma to stop politicizing the issue of coronavirus in the State with his “rascally, irresponsible and ill-motivated utterances”
Wike in a state-wide broadcast on Monday said his administration is focused and therefore will not allow itself to be distracted on its battle against COVID-19.
Ugboma, who appeared in the Rhythm 93.7 FM Viewpoint phone-in programme on May 2, 2020, claimed that Rivers State Govt is rounding people up and declaring them as Covid-19 positive, alleging that “If they don’t like you, they catch you and lock you up at their isolation center”.
When asked if there’s any form of collaboration between his hospital and the Rivers State Govt, he said “ yes, we collaborate, there’s a State Covid-19 team, we are all working together but as Rivers State Govt, there’s no proper collaboration”
His claims did not go down well with Wike who said “We will neither tolerate nor hesitate to deal with anyone who dares to rubbish the hard work and the sacrifice we are all making to save lives in our State just to advance parochial partisan interests.
” Finally, I wish to reiterate that the hard choices we have to make as a Government and as a people over the COVID-19 pandemic are all premised on upholding the sanctity of human life.
” As a Government, we cannot abdicate this compelling responsibility and abandon our people to chances in the midst of this much dreaded and ravaging pandemic.
” All that we continue to ask therefore is the cooperation of everybody to adapt to the new and inevitable reality by obeying the Government directives and advisories on the lockdown, social distancing, proper hygiene, staying at home and wearing of face masks in public.
“We very much understand the social and economic pain inherent in some of these measures but they are necessary and temporary measures, which we shall review in no distant period, as we get set to gradually ease the lockdown and open up our economy”.
