Determined to maintain the status of a state without a single case of COVID-19 infection in Nigeria, Jigawa State has bluntly rejected insinuations on the social media to the effect that there is now a confirmed case from the state. In a lengthy statement explaining why it says there is no such case, Mallam Auwal D. Sankara, the governor’s Media Assistant, says the person said to be infected tested positive in the territory of neighboring Kano State and should be recorded as such even though the affected person is actually from Jigawa State.
Intervention authoritatively learnt that the person was among a group of travellers intercepted at the border from Lagos enroute Kano from where he planned to continue to Jigawa, his home state. However, the fellow tested positive when the samples taken upon their interception at the Kaduna/Kano border were tested.
The drama began when Kano insisted that the fellow be recorded for Jigawa State on ground of state of origin while Jigawa which though has taken the patient, is insisting he be recorded for Kano since he tested positive in the territory of Kano.
Hence the position of the Jigawa State Government which says that in spite of the fact that the said victim is an indigene of Jigawa State, his sample was not taken in Jigawa State and was not confirmed in the shores of the State”. It gives the example of how Muhammed Babandede, the Comptroller-General of Nigerian Immigration Services and an indigene of Jigawa State tested positive but was never recorded as a Jigawa State case because he was not tested in Jigawa but at the FCT where his sample was taken.
While stressing for obvious publicity value how Governor Badaru Abubakar had already sent a medical team to bring the patient to Jigawa where he is now receiving medical attention, the Media Assistant is however saying the bone of contention is what he calls Kano’s regrettable insistence on.
The drama shows how identity can be a problem just as it can be the answer, depending on what is at stake.
