President Muhammadu Buhari; Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo; Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha; and other prominent Nigerians will be among the first set to receive the COVID-19 vaccine on live television.
This is coming after Citifiedblog had earlier reported how a cross-section of Nigerians requested that the president and vice president take the vaccine before other citizen.
This, they described, as ‘leading by example’.
On Thursday, the Executive Director, National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Faisal Shuaib, said the set of persons listed above were to take the vaccine on television to help drive awareness.
He said, “On Tuesday, I mentioned that we will like to see a situation where Mr President, the Vice President, the SGF, critical leaders come and take the vaccine in full glare of the public to demonstrate that this vaccine is safe.
“So, we have to make provisions for those. But even in developed countries, what we have seen is that apart from the prioritisation of health workers, you have to also identify critical leaders that you don’t want them to be wiped off by the virus.”
Shuaib said experience had shown that vaccines are always better than health immunity.
He also said it would take approximately 10 years for one to be able to achieve health immunity and many people would have died if health immunity is to be relied upon.