The Senate at its plenary on Tuesday, May 5, introduced a National Health Emergency Bill 2020, for first reading. The House of Representatives at its session on the same day, addressed concerns over the Control of Infectious Diseases Bill, which has generated\u00a0 so much controversy. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, who is one of the sponsors of the Bill dismissed insinuations that the Bill was aimed at facilitating the subjection of Nigerians to vaccine tests. He also underscored the absence of a legislative framework that empowers the Nigerian government to prevent entry of infectious diseases into the country and to manage public health emergencies, which exposes the government to claims that its directives to manage the COVID-19 pandemic have no legal backing. He further highlighted the inability of the government to hold to account those who have disobeyed guidelines issued by health authorities and those who have broken out of isolation centres and endangered other individuals. He gave assurances that the Bill will be subject to public hearing, to garner contributions from stakeholders. However, he noted that the usual form of public hearing is not tenable and the House may opt for a \u201ca socially distant public hearing\u201d. \u00a0He added that alternative platforms will be provided for Nigerians to submit written documents to articulate their concerns or make recommendations and amendments in respect to the Bill. Following this, the House of Representatives will be holding a two-day public hearing on the Bill. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With regard to reports making the\nrounds that members of the House of Representatives received bribes to pass the\nControl of Infectious Diseases Bill, the House resolved to take legal action\nagainst persons behind these allegations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Senate at its plenary on Tuesday, May 5, introduced a National Health Emergency Bill 2020, for first reading. The House of Representatives at its session on the same day, addressed concerns over the Control of Infectious Diseases Bill, which has generated\u00a0 so much controversy. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, who is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[61],"class_list":["post-1397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-senate-introduces-health-emergency-bill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1397"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1420,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397\/revisions\/1420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}