Benue Did Not Apologise For Revealing Identity Of Coronavirus Patient- Commissioner
The Benue State government has denied apologising to the index case of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), Susan Okpe, for revealing her identity at a press conference addressed by the state governor, Samuel Ortom.
Some online media outlets had reported that the Benue State government had apologised to Okpe, who had since being relocated from Makurdi to Abuja.
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Okpe and her family had protested the governor’s action, saying it caused them psychological trauma.
Okpe had also insisted she did not have the disease, stating that the state government was only playing politics with her life, even though she had been confirmed positive by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
She had since been taken to Abuja, after protesting her isolation at the state isolation centre and demanding a repeat test by the NCDC.
But reacting in an interview with THE WHISTLER on Monday,
Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism in the state, Ngunan Addingi, said reports of apology were false as there was no such thing.
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“There is nothing like that. If the Benue State government was going to apologise, we did a press conference when we released that information. We’ll also carry out a press conference, so where did that happen, that am not aware of? You know, somebody is being mischievous to do alot of libel cases. They’re just insinuating a lot of lies against the government and I don’t know what they want to achieve by that. Just some mischievous people, nothing like that has happened.”
She also dismissed reports linking the death of a young man in the state to coronavirus.
She said the young man, who returned to the state from Ghana was sick and died on his way to Abuja for treatment.
The information commissioner said, though the cause of his death was not known, Governor Ortom had mandated that a post mortem be carried out on the body to actually know what sickness killed him.
She called on media houses to always verify stories before publishing them.
