The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has replied ‘African Queen’ crooner, 2face Idibia who slammed the agency for causing problems for Nigerians travelling abroad.
The NCDC in a series of tweets via the verified NCDC handle took responsibility for the portal’s malfunction which has left many travelers stranded at the airport.
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 travelers to Nigeria.”
The agency further seized the opportunity to reiterate 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 travelers,” the agency tweeted.
The music star took to his Instagram page on Tuesday, April 20, 2021, where he called out the organisation over its flawed process of COVID-19 testing for travelers.
On the NCDC website it is stated that a pre-boarding COVID-19 PCR test must be done within 96 hours before departure.
But to the frustration of many including the veteran musician, travelers undertake the COVID-19 testing but fail to get the Quick Response (QR) code which shows their results from the NCDC website, leaving travelers stranded.
“Ridiculous @ncdcgov compulsory COVID-19 arrival test portal collects N50k per passenger and fails to deliver QR code. Passengers stranded. Business and personal commitments messed up. Who bears responsibility for this?” a frustrated 2face said in a video he shared on his Instagram.
