President Muhammadu Buhari, Monday night, gave legal teeth to all the newly introduced measures issued for the purpose of fighting the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic by signing COVID-19 Regulations, 2020.
The Regulations, in effect, have declared the COVID-19 Pandemic a dangerous infectious disease in Nigeria and took effect from March 30, 2020.
This was disclosed in a statement by the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity Mr Femi Adesina.
According to the statement, President Buhari derived the powers to enact the Regulations from the the Quarantine Act.
This has given legal backing to, among others measures so far declared, the restriction on movements and activities in the FCT, Abuja, Lagos and Ogun States.
“In exercise of the powers conferred on him by Sections 2, 3 and 4 of the Quarantine Act (CAP Q2 LFN 2004), and all other powers enabling him in that behalf, President Muhammadu Buhari, Monday, signed the Covid-19 Regulations, 2020, which declared Covid-19 a dangerous infectious disease.
“The Regulations, effective March 30, 2020, also gave legal backing to the various measures outlined in the President’s National Broadcast on March 29, 2020, such as Restriction/Cessation of Movement in Lagos, FCT and Ogun State and others toward containing the spread of the pandemic in the country.
“In addition, to ensure that Nigerians can still perform on-line transactions and use ATMs whilst observing these restrictions, exemption is granted financial system and money markets to allow very skeletal operations in order to keep the system in light operations during the pendency of these regulations,” the statement said.
