Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday said the country’s economy is “too fragile” to go through another period of lockdown.
The 77-year-old, through his twitter handle, urged Nigerians to continue adhering to the laid down COVID-19 protocols in order to avoid a resurgence of infections that would prompt the government to impose new lockdown measures.
“Looking at the trends in the other countries, we must do all we can to avert a second wave of COVID-19 in Nigeria. We must make sure that our cases, which have gone down, do not rise again. Our economy is too fragile to bear another round of lockdown,” Buhari wrote.
Bihari’s warning comes a day after the World Health Organization published COVID-19 trends in Africa and globally.
After seeing a decline in daily new infections, some countries have recently experienced a resurgence of cases, prompting new restrictions.
The WHO report noted that Nigeria had registered 623 new COVID-19 cases and 6 deaths in the last seven days.
By Thursday afternoon, Nigeria had reported 62,371 infections and 1,139 fatalities.
The West African country’s caseload is the fifth-highest in Africa, only shadowed by tallies recorded by South Africa, Morocco, Egypt and Ethiopia.
