By Kogi State Government on Wednesday began the COVID-19 vaccination exercise in Lokoja.
Health workers and frontline essential non-health workers were the first set of recipients of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines.
The state commissioner for health, Dr. Saka Audu kicked-off the exercise just as Dr. Abubakar Yakubu, Executive Director, Kogi State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (KSPHCDA), was the first person to take the jab.
Kogi was the only state yet to begin administering the vaccine to residents, three weeks after the country began its rollout.
On Monday night, the Kogi government took delivery of 16,900 doses of the vaccine after repeated pushbacks from the governor, Yahaya Bello.
Dr. Abubakar Yakubu led a team of officials from the agency and the Kogi Ministry of Health to receive the vaccines at the Central Medical Store, Lokoja.
Governor Bello is one of the coronavirus skeptics in the country. He had, on a number of occasions, denied the existence of COVID-19 in Kogi, stressing that vaccination was the least of the state’s concerns.
“COVID-19 is just a minute aspect of what we’re treating in Kogi State. I’m not going to subject the people of Kogi State to vaccination, or I will not make them guinea pigs,” he said.
