Covid-19: FG asks US government for direct assistance in vaccine acquisition

The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, stated that Nigeria is willing to cooperate with the U.S Government in a bid to vaccinate 70% of its population, citing Nigeria seeking U.S cooperation to purchase vaccines directly from companies.

The SGF disclosed this in a meeting with US Ambassador to Nigeria, Mary Beth Leonard on Thursday.

What the SGF said

“For us to get to herd immunity, we need to vaccinate 70% of our population, and that’s the major area of concern.

“This is where we believe the United States Government would be of tremendous assistance to areas of support we are looking for in our engagement and our relationship with friendly nations like US in particular with regards to vaccines,” Boss Mustapha said.

He added that Nigeria is “looking for a prospect of a direct assistance from the US to support Nigeria to purchase vaccine directly from companies.”

“So far, we have only been able to access vaccine from Covax facilities and donations from different offers. But so far, we have received 100,000 doses from the Indian company, in addition to the 3,924 million we received from the Covax facilities,” he stated.

He urged the United States to consider setting up a vaccine production plant in Nigeria citing the nation’s huge population compared to other African countries. This, Mustapha assured, will go a long way to safeguard the world.

What you should know

Nairametrics reported this week that Nigeria’s Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed, disclosed that the FG approved the sum of N83.56 billion to purchase 30 million J&J vaccines during the N895 billion supplementary budget session.