Secretary to Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha yesterday said that the demise of the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, caused by coronavirus should serve as proof to doubters that the virus real and a matter of life and death.
Mustapha, who is also Chairman of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, therefore, called on Nigerians to take the matter seriously and adhere to the advice of health authorities on how to prevent the spread of the disease.
“There are very big lessons to learn from the death of Abba Kyari. One of the key lessons for me is that this thing is real and it has come home. How closer can it be to us than this? That is why I keep saying that we should not play with this issue, it is not a joke.
“It has come to ravage our people, ravage our health and ravage our wealth as a nation, so we must take it more seriously and the advisory that have gone out about social distancing, washing of hands and staying at home are not punitive, they are meant for our good.
“We have seen it now, that it has come home to us. If we were thinking of people who had passed on as a result of COVID-19 from a distance, it is not far now. It is just like a brother or friend or a relative that has passed on. This is a man we worked with on a daily basis, you see him virtually every day, so it’s a big lesson that our people should not joke with this, we must wash our hands, stay at home, use sanitizers and follow all the advisories religiously.”
The SGF, however, expressed confidence that Nigeria would beat the disease because of the measures put in place by President Muhammadu Buhari.
“It is a personal loss to me, the President and to the nation. I believe Mallam Abba will be remembered for so many things. He has done a great job for the nation. Mallam Abba was a very good man and very determined, intellectually upright and he had a lot of foresight.
“A lot of people didn’t understand Mallam Abba, but I worked with him for three years and I can tell you that he is a wonderful person, he is a good man; deep down in his heart, he always meant well and I looked up to him as a senior brother in the course of the work that we did in the last three years.
“If I show you my phone, you will see some of the things that he was sending to me even when he was confirmed positive with COVID-19, he was still sending jokes. Every piece of joke he picked up in the Internet he would send it to me.”
