The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control has responded to assertions by popular singer, 2baba, that he and some Nigerians were stuck at an airport because the COVID-19 portal was down.
In a series of tweets via the verified NCDC handle, the agency took blame for the portal’s malfunction.
The agency tweeted, “On the 20th of April, a system failure by one of the partner organisations supporting the management of the COVID-19 travel portal led to an unforeseen downtime. The technical failure was resolved following about 12 hours of downtime.
“We accept full responsibility for this event, which led to inconvenience for several travellers to Nigeria.”
The agency further used the opportunity to restate that they had learnt from the incident and would strive to serve Nigerians better.
“We have learnt from this occurrence and continue to restructure our systems to avoid future events like this and serve Nigerians better. Our commitment remains to protect the health of Nigerians, by reducing the risk of the spread of the virus. This is why the Nigerian International Travel Portal was introduced by @PTFCOVID19.
“We’ll continue strengthening this process to make it seamless for travellers,” the agency tweeted
TheNewsGuru recalls that on Thursday, a frustrated 2face took to his Instagram story to share his plight as he and other Nigerians were stranded at an airport because of the portal breakdown.
According to him, there is a compulsory COVID-19 arrival test portal, which collects N50,000 per passenger but has failed to deliver QR code. He noted that this got them stranded at the airport.
He said: “NCDC; you people better wake up. You are causing serious hardship for people travelling. You will be at the airport, they tell you to pay or bring several things. What is this? What kind of wickedness is all this one?
“This office knows that people travel every second, yet, they are closed. We called their line, nobody picked up. What kind of evil is that? Just imagine Nigerians stranded at the airport because of some useless people. This is unacceptable. It is annoying. It is totally annoying. This is wickedness.”
In the Instastories he shared, the singer further captioned the videos. “@NCDCGOV This racket has to stop. Your useless and money-thieving portal is becoming embarrassing. @NCDCGOV Wakeup. Answer your phones.
“Ridiculous @NCDC compulsory COVID-19 arrival test portal collects N50,000 per passenger and fails to deliver QR code. Passengers stranded. Business and personal commitments messed up. Who bears the responsibility for this?”
