Lagos lockdown blues

By Barometer

Lagos State had the distinguished responsibility of formulating the earliest response to the COVID-19 global health crisis. It moved more quickly and sure-footedly than the federal government in isolating infected patients and treating them, in the process achieving a high survivability ratio.

It had moved progressively from advocacy — hand washing, use of sanitisers, adoption of social distancing measure, etc. — to a gradual shutdown, and was in the midst of developing more focused responses, perhaps not excluding a lockdown, when the federal government butted in and ordered a lockdown. The federal action unfortunately disregarded the economic, social and crime realities of Lagos, not to say also failing to take pre-emptive measures to counter the lockdown’s harmful effects.

A lockdown, at some point, was unavoidable. But it was necessary to prepare the ground for it, no matter how urgent the measure was, and to design economic and social intervention measures that would anticipate the anti-social propensity of criminal elements in the state. It was also necessary to find a balance between the lockdown measure designed to save lives and the economic wellbeing of the people without which the state would erupt in disruptive activities potentially capable of paralysing the state’s economy and counteracting the gains of the COVID-19 war.

The federal government paid little attention to such details, particularly the steps that needed to be taken before a lockdown was ordered. Instead, it rhapsodises the gains of the measure and issued a brusque order, after which it has done very little to obviate the crises that have accompanied and militated against the restrictions.

Now, Lagos is battling almost a full-blown social revolt by young cultists who have been growing in number and ferocity in the past few years. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu seems to think those who poured out into the streets last week to rob and maim did so because they were pure criminals, not hungry youths. It really does not matter. The fact is that the cults are now ubiquitous, partly because the wrong police force had been saddled with the task of reining them in.

The policemen have been very unsuccessful discharging the task assigned them for reasons that are connected with the political structure of the country. Now the cults are numberless, and are increasingly more daring. Lagos has a responsibility to put a ministry and commissioner in charge of that peculiar social anomaly, empower the ministry, and set targets to extirpate or reduce the influence of cults to the barest minimum.

The state has now seen just how much obstreperous youth cults can attenuate sound social and economic policies. It is a huge problem with the potential of creating in the state and the South generally the northern version of bandits and banditry. The lockdown crisis and outbreak of criminality should be an incentive to the state and the region not to let the problem degenerate further.