COVID-19: Suleiman Calls for More Private Sector Support
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (MD/ CEO) of Sterling Bank Plc, Mr. Abubakar Suleiman, has called on players in the private sector to provide vigorous support to the ongoing Covid-19 vaccination exercise so that more people could get vaccinated and drive a speedier reopening of the economy.
He made the call recently while addressing participants at a seminar in Lagos, with the theme: ‘Closing the gap in Covid-19 Vaccination,’ organised by Sterling Bank in collaboration with the Healthcare Federation of Nigeria (HFN), Tremendoc and Helium Health, among others.
Suleiman who spoke on the sub-theme: “Economics of a Successful Covid -19 Vaccine Intervention,” remarked that those who will benefit significantly from the opening of the economy must pay for those who cannot afford to pay to be vaccinated so that the economy can function again.
According to him, “The money which the government must put out is not for vaccination per se even though that is what it is buying. It is to ensure that the economy does not go back into a lockdown with its attendant social crisis in forms of massive unemployment and security challenges. Then, suddenly we are able to find one or two billion dollars when we could not find one million dollars because we did not do the vaccination.”
Furthermore, a statement from the bank quoted him to have said, “For Sterling Bank as a corporate, we have remained committed to the vaccination exercise by participating in every single path of the fight against Covid-19.
“We participated in activating the testing centres and some of the first experiments that Biobank did. We have actively participated in fixing isolation centres and in contributing to CACOVID. One of our most important feats is our set up of a Health Workers’ Fund for the health care experts at the forefront of tackling the coronavirus.”
Suleiman said the Nigerian government was not just fighting a pandemic but also trying to restore the economy back to normalcy.
“What has really struck me as an observer is that there are talks about the possibility of having a third wave of the Covid-19 but unfortunately our people do not realise that we are fighting an invisible enemy,” he added.
The Sterling Bank helmsman said there was need for the federal and state governments as well as members of the public that have the wherewithal to find the money to ensure that a greater percentage of the population is vaccinated.
He said they should look at the vaccination from the perspective of what they are going to lose if a greater percentage of the population is not vaccinated, adding that the value of the vaccination is only useful if everyone has been vaccinated to get the economy can function again.