The former Governor of Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso, has alleged that COVID-19 is responsible for the deaths of senior citizens in the Northern state.

He made this allegation in a letter written to President Muhammadu Buhari, a copy of which was obtained via his Twitter handle.

A copy of the letter was also shared by the Personal Assistant to the President, Bashir Ahmad, who accused Kwankwaso of playing politics with COVID-19.

According to the former governor, the absence of a testing centre in the Kano has made many people resort to “self-help”.

He claimed that those who died in the state contracted the COVID-19 from persons who are positive but unaware.

Part of the letter read,

Permit me, Mr. President, to draw your attention to the spike in mystery deaths among the aged population in Kano State in the last couple of weeks. Hundreds of funerals have been recorded in all the cemeteries of the eight metropolitan local governments alone.

Looking at the pattern elsewhere in the world where senior citizens with preexisting conditions were the main fatalities of the novel coronavirus, we are concerned that the inability to conduct tests in the state to determine the status of these senior citizens might be responsible for their death.

We are even more concerned that if sincere and efficient machinery is not urgently put in place to understand and mitigate against this, more lives of innocent senior citizens will be lost.

I should inform Mr. President that since the announcement of the positive results of the members of the committee, no test was ever conducted in the entire state again. This is very frightening as neither asymptomatic nor active cases are being identified and isolated, as such carriers of this dreaded virus are all about and spreading it and causing the untimely death of especially our senior citizens.

He also urged the Federal Government to take over the responsibility of rapid response on coronavirus in the state.

Among other recommendations given by Kwankwaso to end the rising deaths in Kano are that

the State Government should be made to constitute a proper State Task Force on COVID-19 with members selected base on their professionalism and competence.

At least five additional test centres should be established with 10 other sample collection centres across the State.

An independent Federal Government team of experts should be mandated to investigate the rise in cases of death in the elderly population across the State.

Justin Nwosu

Justin Nwosu is the founder and publisher of Flavision. His core interest is in writing unbiased news about Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. He’s a strong adherent of investigative journalism, with a bent on exposing corruption, abuse of power and societal ills.