Bill to Strengthen Nigeria's Quarantine Act Passes First Reading

The National Health Emergency Bill, 2020, aimed at strengthening the Nigerian Quarantine Act in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic yesterday passed through first reading at the Senate plenary.

This is just as former Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, on Tuesday kicked against the controversial  Infectious Disease Control bill which passed through the second reading in the House of Representatives last week, and therefore, demanded the draft copy of the bill before further consideration by the Senate.

The Clerk of the Senate, Nelson Ayewoh, had earlier announced the first reading of the National Health Emergency bill to the hearing of all the senators present.

Shedding more light on the bill, the sponsor of the bill, Senator Chukwuka Utazi, said its contents and intendment are not the same with the one before the House of Representatives.

According to him, "Although I have not read the content of the one before the House, provisions such as compulsory vaccinations for all citizens and other compulsions for that matter are not there.

"The main purpose of the bill is to strengthen our Quarantine Act by a way of required amendments, and to take care of all the issues that have to do with the management of pandemic like the ranging COVID-19.

"In doing that, we want to ensure that instead of having fire brigade approach of solving the problem of this nature, we have a law that can handle all that. We want to put everything under a law to address health issues."

The lawmaker added that unlike the bill before the House, the National Health Emergency bill introduced on the floor of the Senate yesterday will not generate any controversy as not fewer than 102 senators are co- sponsors of the bill.

"I don't see any controversy about the bill that 102 members of the Senate sponsored. The bill is to address the issue that's posing public health emergency around the world.

"There are so many things that are not covered under the Quarantine Act. These are the things that are troubling the country today which must be addressed through required legislation in form of the bill.

"I have not read the House bill, but what I know is that we have a bill that will address the health issues connected with COVID-19 and beyond, so that such issues, whenever they occur in the future, we have a law to address them.

"What we have in the Quarantine Act doesn't cover all the protocols that we are supposed to follow. If they were there, the presidency and the PTF will not be coming up with one guideline or the other. We want to harmonise the approach on how to face the issue.

"The bill does not make vaccination compulsory. If you have yellow fever, and you want to travel outside the country, they will demand yellow fever vaccination certificate at the airport. If you don't have it, you will be vaccinated there."

Ekweremadu, while kicking against the bill in the House through order 14(1) of  the Senate standing rules, said his privileges and that of the other Senators would be breached, if details of the bill are not made available to them before the bill is given further legislative consideration.

He stressed that "in line with Order 14(1), which has to deal with privileges, as one of the serving senators, I move that draft copies of the bill should be made available before any other legislative action is taken on it.

"This is very important because it won't augur well for the Senate  to follow the same route with the House of Representatives where a controversial bill on Control of Infectious Diseases was passed for first and second reading last week.”