The Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, has said that requests by Governors to fly from one part of the country to the other had been denied several times by the Federal Government because of the need to curb the spread of Coronavirus Disease.
Sirika said this on Tuesday at the new briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in Abuja.
He said the Ministry had only been giving approval to essential flights.
He said: “Every single flight that you would see, every single flight that we would approve would be an essential flight and 98 per cent of them would be connected to COVID-19.
“A few others, maybe 1 per cent, might be either a repatriation request from a diplomatic community, which must go through foreign affairs, or it might be repatriation due to illness of another kind.
“And those repatriations will also need the stamp of a teaching hospital.
“There is no exception to governors.
“I had denied several of such flights, including two governors from South South and two from the South East.
“And by the way, three of them are members of the APC (All Progressives Congress) and I think one is from North Central.
“Once you see a flight approved, it is diligently done and it must be essential, COVID-19-related or some other flights like essential cargo that would bring in medicines or equipment or something related to our well being like food.”
