FORMER Delta State governorship aspirant, Chief Sunny Onuesoke, has lauded the Federal Government’s gesture of placing the United Kingdom, Canada and Saudi-Arabia on the COVID-19 Omicron red list and banning of flights from the countries.
Fielding questions from journalists at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, the chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), said that although he criticises the government often but the red alert placed on the countries is appropriate so far.
According to him, Nigeria is still a sovereign nation that must not be toyed with regardless of its challenges, saying, “The point I find very interesting and satisfying is that Nigeria has taken a retaliatory action. They don’t want Nigerians and her airlines in their countries, yet they fly theirs in and out. This sort of one-sided and insult used to be the order of the day and Nigerian government just went along. It must be tit for tat for those countries to take us seriously in the future.”
Recalled that the Nigerian government has stated that it will place the United Kingdom, Canada and Saudi Arabia on a red list over the outbreak and spread of Coronavirus’ Omicron variant.
The Federal Government had said it will also stop airlines from those countries coming into Nigeria in retaliation for the three nations banning travels from Nigeria over the new COVID-19 variant.
However, Onuesoke said he cannot imagine the United Kingdom banning Nigeria because of six or seven recorded COVID -19 Omicron viruses in Nigeria, while the United Kingdom is a reservoir of that viruses.
“I don’t want to talk about Canada because that country is outside the usual radar of Nigeria. Nigeria merely relates to Canada via the Commonwealth of Nations because she knows the relevant and important countries on the North American Continent and in the Americas generally; and definitely not Canada.
“That of Saudi Arabia against Nigeria is abominable. If the Nigerian Muslim Ummah would accept that nonsense from Saudi Arabia then good luck to them. If not for the hajj, who would even look in the direction of Saudi Arabia?” , It would have been better for the Nigerian government to announce the ban outrightly instead of giving a notice.
