Mustapha who reacted
to claim of the Nigerian government being asked to pay €170,000 for the
Madagascar herbal mixture delivered to President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday
May 16, by the visiting President of Guinea Bissau Umaro Sissoco Embalo, said
same mixture was taken to other African countries without an invoice.
According to him,
when he took delivery of the sealed herbal mixture, he was not handed an
invoice, which would have indicated if there was a cost.
He said;
“In terms of the
question of whether it comes with a cost. It was handed to me without an
invoice so I assume it doesn’t come with a cost.
“That’s my
assumption. For that, I think the Madagascar issue and the Chinese issue should
be laid to rest.
“I think we have
said repeatedly hear that we did not ask for the Madagascar consignment, it was
given by the government of Madagascar to African countries as their
contribution to wanting to find solution to the COVID-19 pandemic and we have
repeatedly said our consignment and those of West African countries, was
dropped off at Guinea Bissau and that we were making arrangements to go and
airlift it.
“As God would have
it, the President of Guinea Bissau decided to visit our President last Saturday
and when he was coming, he came with our consignment of five cartons and those
five cartons were delivered to me yesterday in the evening, sealed, without a
bottle out of it.
“I’m going to engage
the Minister of Health who has the responsibility of validation, through his
institutions that are chartered by law to do that.
“The President was
upfront with that even when he took delivery of it from the President of Guinea
Bissau.
“He said it quite
clear of what we are going to do with the consignment would be guided by
science, under the processes of validation, we’ll now know where to go."
The SGF who further
disclosed that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the weaknesses in all systems
of the world, even of the so-called superpowers, stated that it would be a huge
mistake for Nigerians to desire to go back to their old ways.
Mustapha added;
“If we do not learn
anything from COVID-19 and build institutions that will be enduring and
sustainable, we would have failed the next generation.
“Life after COVID-19
will not be our normal type of life again. COVID-19 has come and it has
disrupted everything you know as normal and the benefit of that distraction is
that we will begin to put on our thinking cap and begin to address issues
differently because it has exposed the weaknesses in all systems.
“It’s not only the
Nigeria system that has been exposed, even the big countries with very big
economies, COVID-19 has exposed every gap in their systems; their system of
health, their social safety nets, their governance issues have all been
disrupted and I can assure you that after COVID-19, at the individual level, at
the community level, at the state level, at the national level, we will begin
to do things differently. It cannot be business as usual again."
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