A pharmacist and former Lagos State gubernatorial candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the 2019 general election, Jimi Agbaje, has announced that he has been inoculated with AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

The politician who broke the news on Tuesday via his Twitter handle @JimiAgbaje encouraged Nigerians to join the fight against the pandemic by getting the COVID-19 jab.

“I took the first shot of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine today. The vaccine will keep us from getting seriously ill even if we do get COVID-19.

“The vaccine may also protect people around us from contracting the virus,” he said.

Agbaje, who was recently a guest on ARISE NEWS breakfast show, noted that the challenges of COVID-19 are the same everywhere in terms of the people.

He also suggested strict adherence to non-pharmaceutical interventions like social distancing and proper hygiene as well as advocacy in the fight against the second wave of COVID-19 since the country cannot access enough vaccines for its citizens.

“Not everybody believes in the seriousness of the pandemic. So the first problem for the government is advocacy-to make people realise the seriousness of the disease.

“In terms of how the government has managed it, Agbaje said they have managed it as best as they can because “like I said, it is more about advocacy; it is more about the non-pharmaceutical interventions that will help us, especially with our weak health system,” he said.

When asked for his view in the area of COVID-19 vaccines, Agbaje regretted that the country was not in the driver’s seat “in the sense that we belong to the category of what we call poor countries, in which some people are taking care of us, where some people are negotiating on our behalf as to how much we can get free and how much we can pay at reduced prices.

“Unfortunately, there is also a reality, and that reality is that even with that arrangement, it’s estimated that just about 20 per cent of our population will have the vaccination in 2021. So if we take that average, you are looking at a situation where if we have 200 million people, we are not going to get more than about 30 to 40 million people vaccinated in 2021, and that means we have to go back to the non-pharmaceutical interventions, which is going to be our strength, and that is the reality we are in at the moment.”