Boss Mustapha, secretary to the government of the federation (SGF), says the federal government will soon make COVID-19 vaccination compulsory for civil servants.
Speaking at a meeting of the health commissioners forum on Thursday in Abuja, Mustapha said the government wants civil servants to be vaccinated, considering that they sometimes represent Nigeria abroad.
The SGF said the fact that some countries have banned unvaccinated persons is one of the reasons civil servants should embrace vaccination.
Mustapha, who is chairman of the presidential steering committee on COVID-19 (PSC), said;
The vaccine mandate will obviously come. Before now, simple yellow fever vaccine, you couldn’t travel without the card until Nigeria exited from the list of endangering countries.
The world is gravitating towards that direction. By the time the western world vaccinates its people, you won’t be able to get to any of the western countries without the vaccine certificate. It is happening.
In the EU dispensation now, they have created some waivers for people that have been vaccinated. It is better we begin to prepare our people at home.
He stressed;
One of the reasons we want to do that with the federal civil servants is because they will be travelling to perform roles on behalf of the Federal Government. The United Nations General Assembly will be starting soon. We will need our people to go there. Assuming the American Government says you can’t come into the US unless you are vaccinated and we have not vaccinate our people; how will they go to prepare ground for the meeting that will be attended by the President and other top government officials?
Mustapha added;
It is a sequential thing. We are taking one step at a time. We realised that we don’t have sufficient vaccines; we will not be able to impose such mandate on an automatic basis until we make sure that vaccine is available and deployed in appropriate places and people we have opportunities to get the vaccines. Then we will now impose the mandatory nature of whether you must have the vaccine or not before you can access government facilities.
