Unlocking Anambra Was Well Thought Out – Gov Obiano

Obiano explained this through the State Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Mr C. Don Adinuba saying the policy was one of Anambra’s many firsts in showing the light.

Obiano had on Saturday, during a broadcast announced that with the discharge of the state’s COVID-19 index case and the negative status of 39 of his contacts, the state was now free of the pandemic, hence, churches and food markets could resume business, while maintaining high hygiene and social distancing.

Adinuba in a press statement said, “The Anambra State administration has become exemplary in formulating a policy to fight the coronavirus by combining the best elements from the major two schools of thought which have emerged in the global campaign against COVID-19.

“The state has integrated the best elements from what may be termed the public health school which is in favour of a total lockdown comparable to 24-hour curfew everywhere until the disease is defeated completely and the second which may be called the economics/business school that believes a total lockdown will result in economic depression and, of course, the death of an unimaginable number of persons.”

He added that “Anambra State administration is bound to protect its people from the ravages of COVID-19, but it cannot afford to do so by unwittingly allowing millions of its people to die of hunger and starvation or by causing their businesses to collapse through an unmitigated lockdown.

“The 28 days of lockdown, when all markets were shut down, vehicular and human movements restricted, schools closed, traditional religious services suspended, funerals, wedding and title taking ceremonies practically stopped, have already taken an enormous toll on the people’s well being.

“Social unrest must be avoided. If people in developed nations could not accept more than three weeks of lockdown, despite the immense social safety nets for the poor and the huge amounts paid by governments directly to the citizens who lost their jobs in the wake of COVID-19, we can imagine what the most vulnerable in our society and elsewhere in Africa have been going through.

“Governor Willie Obiano did the right thing by announcing on Saturday, April 25, some policy fine-tuning,” the release stated.