The Federal Government has said there are no plans to restrict foreigners from visiting Nigeria.
This is despite travel bans on Nigeria by Canada, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Singapore and Hong Kong.
The federal government also claimed that most of the in-bound passengers that tested positive for COVID-19 were from the UK.
The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, said this on Channels Television’s ‘Politics Today’ programme on Sunday.
Ehanire described as unfortunate the knee-jerk reaction of some countries to the Omicron strain. He noted that even the World Health Organisation had said recently that countries should focus more on collaboration rather than shutting borders.
“At the moment we have no plans restricting anybody coming from another country,” he said.
The WHO had two weeks ago designated the omicron variant as a variant of concern.The NCDC had last week announced that the country had reported three cases of the variant. Before this, the Canadian government had announced that it found two individuals with the variant who had travel history to Nigeria.
The UK on Saturday night also announced that it found 21 cases of the omicron variant which were linked to Nigeria. It announced that it would, from Monday (today), restrict all flights emanating from Nigeria.
It also suspended all pending visa applications in Nigeria due to the ban on flights from Nigeria due to the Omicron variant.
The UK said there are only very limited exemptions to travel and entry requirements for critical workers and medical and compassionate cases.”
But the minister said the Omicron strain could not yet be declared as a deadly strain because no deaths had so far been recorded across the world.