Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Akwa Ibom state has enforced a ban on interstate travel of people by deporting 13 suspected Almajiri youths who sneaked into the state.
The youths who came from one of the Northern states in the country were said to have accompanied a truck that brought a herd of cows to Eket local government area of the state during the ban on inter-state movement order imposed by the Federal Government.
Akwa Ibom Governor Udom Emmanuel who stated this on Saturday during a live radio and television in a question-and-answer interview said the government ordered and escorted the youths out of the state after they had offloaded the cows to their destination.
The Governor, therefore, warned drivers and commuters to adhere to the ongoing ban on inter-state movement of persons during the lockdown period to avoid embarrassment.
On polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machine, he said the state government in had in March this year paid the manufacturers of the machine used for testing people having suspected cases of coronavirus, lamenting that the machine is yet to arrive the state owing to the global lockdown.
Emmanuel expressed delay that the Federal Government is not establishing the laboratory in each of the six geo-political regions in the country, stating that it takes officials of the state government 15 hours to go to another state and return the samples for testing of coronavirus.
