It has been uncovered why some state governments are pushing for the mandatory COVID-19 vaccination of their citizens despite widespread opposition to the move.
Two states in Nigeria – Edo and Ondo – recently announced compulsory COVID-19 vaccinations for adults. Even after a court restrained the Edo State government from going ahead, it insists the order stands.
The Federal Government is also considering making COVID-19 vaccination compulsory for civil servants.
According to reliable sources within the International Monetary Fund, there is a facility known as Performance for Result (PFR), a kind of reward for every government that speeds up vaccination of its citizens.
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In a report by Trojan news, an online news platform, for every Edo person that gets vaccinated, the Edo state government gets $200 credit from the $400m facility for Nigeria.
This $200 is actually meant for economic palliative for the citizens and additional investment in the health care system especially in the poor urban areas and rural slums of the state. This is a world health organization framework.
For the avoidance of doubt if 200,000 Edo citizens get vaccinated the state government will be credited with a whopping sum of USD$40m.
In actual sense the $200 is supposed to be handed over to the citizen at the point of being vaccinated but the Nigerian government decided to credit it to the states account directly which has now been diverted to other corrupt uses by the governors.
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The state government has privatized all medical facilities to non-indigenes and most of them unqualified doctors from Lagos, Delta and Anambra state.
Officials at the IMF headquarters in Washington have advised that on no account should the government force citizens to be vaccinated but they also stand the risk of not getting the PFR facility due to the poor vaccination process.
Mandating vaccinations for COVID-19 raises many complex and difficult legal questions concerning the interplay of competing human rights. On the one hand there is the issue of health and safety. On the other hand, personal human rights.