The delegation were led by the Commissioner for Health,
Prof. Akin Abayomi and the Director General of the Lagos State Safety
Commission, Mr. Lanre Mojola
Speaking after the inspection of the church facilities and
meeting with the church officials, Abayomi said the inspection was in line with
the third wave mitigation strategy of the Lagos State Government to prevent the
importation and spread of new deadly strains of COVID into Lagos and Nigeria.
He noted that the Late Prophet was a prominent person with
large congregation and followers from around the world, saying that the funeral
rites would expectedly attract people from within and outside Nigeria who would
deem it fit to come pay their last respect to the clergy.
Abayomi explained that the Lagos State Government considered
the funeral activities at SCOAN an important event enough to ensure strict
compliance to COVID safety protocols to prevent the importation, transmission
or spread of the newly deadly strains of COVID infection to the State or
country.
The commissioner added that the inspection and meeting with
officials of SCOAN was at the behest of the Lagos State Governor who directed
that SCOAN be given all the support required to host the funeral programme for
its late founder under strict COVID prevention protocol to limit any
possibilities of introduction of foreign COVID variants among the congregation
and by extension to the community.
He said: “On behalf of the Lagos State Government we want to
offer our deep condolences to the family of the prophet and members of the
congregation. In these very precarious times that we are in, with a global
pandemic that is evolving dynamically; what we now know is that there are
different strains of the virus circulating around the world, and Lagos State
has a very strong third wave prevention strategy.
“The likely cause of a third wave is going to be an
importation from visitors who are infected with the virus, so we are
particularly careful about working with the Synagogue to make sure that we have
a collaboration that will reduce the opportunity to zero of us either importing
a virus or even allowing someone who is positive to interact with the
community.
“So we have had series of engagements with the officials and
executive of SCOAN, we are also in touch with the Federal Government; the
Presidential Steering Committee and the Federal Ministry of Health.
Abayomi and other government officials at SCOAN |
“So, we’ve engaged with several stakeholders, we are looking
at the airport, we are looking at the land borders, we are looking at event
preceding the five or seven days of the funeral, we are looking at the funeral
activities itself, we have a detailed account of the programme, we are putting
some guidelines in place.
“Any visitor coming into the country has to go through the
mandatory seven days of isolation plus testing before they can participate in
any of the activities. We’ve inspected all the accommodation, we’ve looked at
the auditorium and we’ve calculated how to completely eliminate the chance and
the risk of infectious transmission”, the Commissioner stated.
He stated that there were some areas of infection prevention
protocols that needed strengthening in the church, assuring that those areas
would be strengthened before and during the funeral activities.
He added that biosecurity and safety experts would also be
on ground to work with the local organizing committee to monitor and ensure
safety of attendees.
He said: “In collaboration with the Lagos State Safety
Commission and the Biosecurity Unit of the Ministry of Health, we’ve seen some
areas that needs strengthening, we’ve been observing these for some days now
and we are strengthening the protocols, so that as events are leading up to the
seven days and during the seven days, we will have marshals on ground, we will
have biosecurity experts on ground, will continuously monitor the situation and
work with SCOAN to make sure we can keep this place safe and keep the
congregation safe and keep Lagosian safe”
The team from the State Government which also included the Incident Manager of the Emergency Operation Centre of Lagos COVID Response, Dr. Ismail Abdul Salam, members of the Lagos State Ministry of Health Biosecurity team, officials of the Lagos State Safety Commission and representatives of the Federal Ministry of Health’s Port Health Services inspected the auditorium, marquee tent, hostel accommodation for international guests and sanitary facilities during the inspection.