PDP deplores lack of budget for COVID-19 vaccines

By : Azimazi Momoh Jimoh, Abuja

Date: 14 January 2021 5:14am WAT

(FILES) An undated handout picture released by the University of Oxford on November 23, 2020 shows a vial of the University's COVID-19 candidate vaccine, known as AZD1222, co-invented by the University of Oxford and Vaccitech in partnership with pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca. - Britain on December 30, 2020 became the first country in the world to approve the coronavirus vaccine developed by drug firm AstraZeneca and Oxford University, with a mass rollout planned from January 4, 2021. (Photo by John Cairns / University of Oxford / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD / John Cairns " - NO MARKETING - NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - RESTRICTED TO ILLUSTRATING STORIES RELATED TO THE PARTICULAR VACCINE, EVENTS AND FACTS MENTIONED IN THE CAPTION - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS /

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), yesterday, described as alarming the failure of the Federal Government to make adequate budgetary provision for COVID-19 vaccines.

Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, had on Monday, said there was no provision in the 2021 budget to fund acquisition of the therapy.

During a virtual presentation of the 2021 budget in Abuja, she, however, explained that the Federal Government was working on the type and quantity of vaccines to procure, while her ministry and that of Health would finalise cost within 14 days.

But the PDP described “such failure as a manifest lack of commitment and proactiveness by the Buhari administration to check the spate of the second wave of COVID-19 and the escalating deaths arising from the spread of the pandemic in our country.”

The party, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, said it was “unpardonable that the lives of compatriots are increasingly becoming endangered, as number of deaths arising from COVID-19 kept increasing by the day.”

The main opposition said it was “shocking that the Buhari administration did not make any budgetary provision in the 2021 Appropriation (Bill) for the acquisition of essential therapeutics, including vaccines, even in the face of the heightened anxieties over the second wave of the pandemic in our nation.”

The party went on: “It is indeed the height of leadership failure that the Federal Government has not been able to take a decision on the type and quantity of vaccines expected, as well as ancillary facilities and associated logistics.”

The PDP condemned the administration for displaying what it called “such governance indolence and confusion.”