The cases have also been confirmed by the World Health Organisation, with Isaac Adewole, Nigeria’s Minister of health, saying this is a big setback for the nation on health issues.
“It is unfortunate that we have the development. It has set us back. But I can assure the nation that we will do everything possible to be on top of the situation,” he said.
“We are meeting again today. We had a meeting yesterday to look at the situation. We are drawing out an emergency plan and in the next 48 hours, we are dispatching a team there and we are going to start immunization.
“We would do three rounds of special immunization campaigns to make sure that we contain the situation.”
He added that “one of the cases is from Gwoza, which is actually close to the border”, while the other one is Jere.
“We suspect that both of them are linked to the insurgents eclipse,” he said.
“Mr. President himself, when we had a meeting last week, observed that as we liberate more areas, we should expect challenges. But we did not expect that there would be polio. We were expecting nutrition and other problems.
“As a nation, we will rise up to the challenge. We are assured by our international partners and we will launch a robust response. We have enough funding for immunization in the 2016 budget.