Corona crunch

Editorial

The grand irony is lost on many.  For minor health conditions or projected political crises, the instinct of the Nigerian elite is to jet out to “saner climes” — and proudly so.

But now, with a serious pandemic laying the globe prostrate, and chalking far higher casualties in the more developed parts of the world, the traffic is reversed, and many Nigerians abroad are clambering to be flown back home — and near-hysterically so.

Has it taken the breakout of COVID-19 for many a Nigerian abroad — and the homers still starry-eyed for foreign travel — to realize there is no place as home?

According to a report in The Nation, 2, 110 Nigerians, as at April 13, up from 1, 000 a few days earlier, are asking to be flown back home.  This SOS has come from 75 countries, all with their fair share of Coronavirus crisis.

The breakdown include 466 from the United Kingdom, 253 from the United Arab Emirate (UAE), 299 from China and 163 from the United States, among the countries with high numbers. Other requests include:  Turkey (160), Egypt (115), India (92), Malaysia (84), Cyprus (72), South Africa, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia (35 each), Ghana (32), Cameroon (20), Sudan (18), Ukraine (15), Pakistan (14), Jordan (13), Germany (10), Italy (8), Australia (six), France (3), Oman (5), Phillippines (3), Poland (3) and Qatar (4).

Eight of the 40 already tested for COVID-19 in the UK have returned positive.  Mandatory COVID-19 test is one of the preconditions for the airlift back home, aside from the travellers bearing their air fares, and agreeing to 14 days quarantine, after landing on home soil, in accordance with World Health Organization (WHO) global health advisory, to curb the spread of Coronavirus.

What now happens to those that test positive?  Would they be left to their fate in foreign lands?  Or the Nigerian authorities would work out some flight arrangements, to suit their circumstances?  Flying positive COVID-19 cases, in the pressured cabin of aircraft could prove testy, with the airline crew at risk.  Still, something can still be worked out.

Some of those now calling to be flown back home are Nigerians on sundry missions to their foreign destinations, but trapped in there with the sudden lockdowns.  Such Nigerians are running out of cash and sundry resources.  Imagine running cashless on foreign soil!  Though not a few argue many might have had ample time to return but didn’t, that is neither here nor there.

So, whatever the Nigerian government can do to relieve and comfort these trapped Nigerians, they should do — and fast.  Time is of essence and delay could just change a situation from safety to catastrophe.

Many, if not most, of them could also be clamouring to come back home, impressed by how the Nigerian health authorities are managing the pandemic; even if a section of the population here still behaves as if COVID-19 is a joke or hoax, by the way they buck the lockdown and shun the social distancing advisory.

For now, management statistics favour Nigeria.  Compared with Europe and America, as at April 16, Nigeria’s tally of 442 cases, 152 recovered and 13 deaths is piddling, compared with the global tally of 2, 168, 919 cases, 546, 273 recovered and 144, 699 deaths, most of these grim stats from Europe and America.  But it’s early days yet and cases are still rising.

Still, this encouraging COVID-19 management should lead the way to a better and more robust public healthcare system, such that Nigerians, elite and masses, would stay home to be treated, rather than jet off on medical tourism, expending scarce forex, at the slightest excuse.

If COVID-19 leads to a far better public health system — and if we are serious as a people and government, it should —  then some local good would have come from a global pandemic.  Then that phrase, “No place like home”, would have added positive bounce and meaning.