Barometer
Advice is not in short supply on how the federal government should handle the coronavirus war. The government has not been as coordinated in the war as most Nigerians expect, and sometimes targeted measures have come late or spasmodically. Former Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Anthony Cardinal Okogie, is one of those advisors, if a sceptical one, the government should listen to. His press statement on Nigeria’s COVID-19 war remains one of the most succinct and exceptional. After making a few political statements, all of them apt and relevant to the subject matter, he zeroed in on the war and how, if care is not taken, it could easily unravel.
Said the cleric: “But government could and ought to have used this moment to encourage Nigerians to open bank accounts. A more transparent means of giving out the money would have been to ask each person for his or her bank verification number and to send the money into their accounts. Apart from the fact that it would have encouraged more Nigerians to open bank accounts, it would have made it possible to account for every naira that is given out. In the same vein, we have heard how billions of naira are being donated to government without government telling Nigerians how the donation will be spent.”
See how uncannily his views tally with SGF Mustapha’s fears on the management and coordination of the fight against coronavirus. Hopefully, the government — and who by the way is the government being referenced? — will put its act together and prosecute the war firmly, sensibly and coherently.
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