President Muhammadu Buhari has extended the stay at home order in Lagos, Ogun and Abuja by 14 more days.

The President made this known during a nationwide broadcast Monday. He said the decision is made after a careful consideration of reports and briefings of the presidential Task Force and various options offered. “It has become necessary to extend the current restriction of movement in Lagos and Ogun States as well as the FCT for another 14 days effective from 11:59 pm on Monday, 13th of April, 2020. I am therefore once again asking you all to work with Government in this fight, ” he said.

While thanking Nigerians for obeying the restriction order, the president acknowledged the fact that the order is in the interest of all Nigerians. “We are fully aware that this measures will severely disrupt your livelihoods and bring undue hardship to you, your loved ones and your communities.

“However, such sacrifices are needed to limit the spread of COVID-19 in our country. They were necessary to save lives, ” he said.

President Buhari stressed that the lockdown order is yielding results as the NCDC have been able to identify identified 92% of all identified contacts while doubling the number of testing laboratories in the country and raising our testing capacity to 1,500 tests per day.

He said, “We also trained over 7,000 Healthcare workers on infection prevention and control while deploying NCDC teams to 19 states of the federation.”

On the palliative given out to cushion to effect of the stay at home which has dropped businesses, the president said “in the past two weeks, we announced palliative measures such as food distribution, cash transfers and loans repayment waivers to ease the pains of our restrictive policies during this difficult time. These palliatives will be sustained.

“I have also directed that the current social register be expanded from 2.6 million households to 3.6 million households in the next two weeks. This means we will support an additional one million homes with our social investment programs. A technical committee is working on this and will submit a report to me by the end of this week.”

He urged citizens to follow the instructions on social distancing. “The irresponsibility of the few can lead to the death of the many. Your freedom ends where other people’s rights begin, ” he stressed.

He assured Nigerians that In the coming weeks, the Federal Government, through the Presidential Task Force, will do whatever it takes to support citizens in this very difficult period, stressing that he has no doubt that, “by working together and carefully following the rules, we shall get over this pandemic.”