The Bayelsa State Government on Thursday extended by two weeks the five-day dusk-to-dawn curfew it imposed on the state to strengthen COVID-19 lockdown.
The curfew, which commenced on Sunday, restricted movements between 7am and 6am across the state.
According to a statement by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Orientation, Mr Freston Akpor, Governor Douye Diri said that the extension followed the national lockdown decision taken by the Nigeria Governors’ Forum to contain the COVID-19 infection.
The statement said, “Governor Douye Diri has extended by two weeks the dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed on the state.
“The extension is necessitated by the fallout of the meeting by the governors’ forum for a nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19 across the country.”
The government added that security personnel had been placed on alert to ensure compliance.
Also, Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq of Kwara State on Thursday announced the extension of the lockdown imposed on the state by another 14 days, to further prevent the spread of coronavirus.
The governor announced this in Ilorin during the flag-off of the biometric registration of transporters slated to receive soft loans to cushion the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown.
AbdulRazaq said that the extension of the lockdown by another 14 days was in accordance with the position of the Federal Government and the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF).
He added that the state recorded two new cases of COVID-19 early Thursday, bringing the number of confirmed cases to 11.
The governor added that the two new cases were contacts of the previous confirmed cases.
“The lockdown for another two weeks is to reduce the number of cases. As you can see, Kano is going up; Lagos is going up. Even in Kwara, we have two more new cases.
“So there is the need for boundaries to be locked down. Essentially, each state has different policies on lockdown but we want to ensure that people are not moving across boundaries to transmit the virus,” he said.
