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.”
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