COVID-19: Hotels unwilling to accommodate returning Nigerians to protect brands — Onyeama

The Presidential Task Force on Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, has said its effort to get accommodations for Nigerians stranded abroad on account of the coronavirus pandemic was being frustrated as it could not find a space that would take all 2,000 of them.

The Federal Government had this week said it will commence the evacuation next week in two batches of 200, having secured agreement with two airlines to bring back the citizens at affordable rates.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, who disclosed this during a briefing by the Presidential TaskForce on COVID-19 in Abuja on Friday, said hotels approached to accommodate them said this action might wound their brands.

Onyeama said: “On the issue of testing before boarding and testing when they get home, this is something the task force studied very carefully and got all the best medical advice and it was finally decided that since there are some countries where it is not going to be possible to get any testing done that it is enough that at the airport, you do the testing of temperature and the general look of coughing or not coughing. For reasons such as that, even if someone at that stage tests negative, it could be at the incubation period and for reasons such as that it could be an incubation period they could be positive. So it is better for all the normal precautions to be taken on the flight and to be tested when they reach the country.

“When I engaged the Chinese ambassador, one of the things he assured the Chinese government are going to do or have started to do was the issue of cost, the payment Nigerians have to pay, that the government was going to look at extending some assistance to Nigerians.

“To then say their predicament is because of the delay of the Nigerian government in evacuating them is not totally correct because you can only evacuate when everything is ready here on the country. We have Nigerians who want to come back from all over the world. The numbers in UK alone is about 2,000.

“The simple fact of the matter is that we just don’t have the isolation centres, hospital beds and hotel to accommodate them all. We have been looking for hotels in Abuja and Lagos.

“I spoke this afternoon with the governor of Lagos state and the real challenge, even for the government of Lagos state is to find hotels that are willing to take these people in for the 14 days. A lot of hotels feel clearly it would damage their brand and have some effect on their business so that has been a real problem for us now.

“Then the other alternative is for people to come back then and be isolated in their homes, but when you have such numbers, some of the people on the task force feel that there is a risk that you would not have the guarantee that they would stay in their homes and be under quarantine. And it would be very difficult to monitor that number of people for two weeks. So this is the real dilemma we are facing.

“And if they start coming back and the numbers start spiking then the government will be blamed that why did you bring so many people back. So these are all the issues we are grappling but hopefully, we will find a solution to that.”