Barely five months after the country confirmed its first case of the coronavirus pandemic on February 27, 2020, a total of 31,323 cases have been confirmed and recorded while 12,795 persons who had contracted the virus have been discharged and 709 deaths recorded, as reported by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) daily update.
Since March 23 when the first death, involving a prominent person, 67-year-old Suleiman Achimugu, an engineer and former managing director of Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC), was recorded, prominent politic
ians including a former governor, ministers, lawmakers, party chieftains, among others, have lost their lives. Top among them was the late Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, Malam Abba Kyari.
Below are ten prominent Nigerian politicians who have succumbed to the virus.
1. Abba Kyari: It was when the Chief of Staff to President Buhari tested positive for COVID-19 on March 24 that the virus was taken more seriously. The 67-year-old presidential aide battled with the pandemic until April 17 and died at the First Cardiology Consultants, a private hospital in the Ikoyi area of Lagos State. He was buried at the Gudu cemetery.
2. Abiola Ajimobi: The immediate past governor of Oyo State, Senator Abiola Ajimobi, died on June 25 following complications arising from the pandemic at 70. While battling with the virus.
3. Adebayo Sikiru Osinowo: Senator representing Lagos East also died of coronavirus at the First Cardiology Consultants, the same hospital where Kyari died.
4. Suleiman Adamu: Was a member of the Nasarawa State House of Assembly. He died after a brief illness on April 30. It was days after his death that the sample taken from him returned positive for COVID-19.
5. Tunde Buraimoh: He is the latest COVID-19 casualty in the political scene. He was a member of the Lagos State House of Assembly, he died early hours of yesterday, Friday.
6. Aminu Adisa Logun: He was the Chief of staff to Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq of Kwara State until Tuesday, July 7, when he died of COVID-19 complications.
7. Wahab Adegbenro: He was the Ondo State Commissioner of Health and has of COVID- 19 complications last week.
8. Shuaibu Danlami: Was a staff of Gombe Government House, a director for special services and politics at the office of the SSG and a member of the state task force on COVID-19 died of the virus on May 31.
Also on the list of prominent politicians who died as the result of the coronavirus pandemic are the Two members of the Borno State House of Assembly; Umar Audi Jauro and Wakil Bukar.
According to a medical practitioner, Dr Egbogu Stanley said most of the politicians that died had chronic illnesses and have been managing them for a long time via travels abroad or undergoing expensive treatments.
He, however, said the rate at which politicians were dying from COVID-19 was no different from the rate ordinary Nigerians have lost their lives to the disease. He said people tend to note that of politicians because they were well known or public figures.
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