President Muhammadu Buhari has asked State House staff and reporters who covered and attended the funeral prayer/burial ceremony of his late Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari at Defence House and Gudu Cemetery Abuja to work from home for the next 14 days.
In a statement yesterday, Deputy Director (Information), State House, Attah Eesa, said the advice was a precautionary measure.
Kyari died Friday of complications from coronavirus in a Lagos hospital and was buried in Abuja Saturday.
Experts and ordinary Nigerians had called on the Presidency to quarantine those who attended the burial for allegedly violating physical distancing and other safety guidelines.
A presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, who was among those present at the burial, said there was nothing extraordinary about the precautions to self-isolate in a message yesterday on his Twitter handle@GarShehu.
“There is nothing extraordinary about those of us who attended Abba Kyari’s funeral being advised to distance ourselves from the Villa.
“This is in line with the standard rules put in place by the National Centre for Disease Control, @NCDCgov and the Federal Ministry of Health. You do these things to stop the spread of #Coronavirus.
“For the most part, the Villa has operated digitally in the last few weeks so there is really nothing new to this,” Shehu said.
Shehu had, in a statement early Saturday morning, said Kyari’s funeral prayers and burial would be private “in strict observation of the protocol put in place for the burial of coronavirus victims by the NCDCgov and the Federal Ministry of Health.”
Other attendees at the burial included the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha; the National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno; the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Ali Pantami; the Minister of State for Agriculture, Mustapha Baba Shehuri; a former permanent secretary, State House, Jalal Arabi; a former governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima; Farouk Adamu Aliyu; among others.
