By Nwanosike Onu, Awka
The former Secretary to Anambra State Government, during former Governor Peter Obi’s administration, Mr Oseloka Obaze, says the healthcare providers need more support on the Coronavirus ravaging the entire world.
He declared yesterday in Awka that the pandemic, if allowed to continue, it’s effect would be like a civil war situation in Nigeria.
The Governorship candidate of the People’s Democratic Party PDP, during the last election in Anambra State, said the reactive responses so far were grossly insufficient for the scope of impending complex emergency and crisis that could be cataclysmic for Nigeria.
Obaze, who spoke with reporters yesterday in Awka, said closing public institutions and banning public gatherings was salutary.
He however, said the national medical response capacity was far from efficient and sufficient for the scope of unfolding public health emergency.
According to him, “When the crisis unfolds fully in weeks or months ahead, and the ripple-effects manifest, individuals and communities will inevitably turn to state governments, which at this juncture are mostly ill-prepared and ill-equipped to respond efficiently and robustly”
” For now we are well behind the response curve. We need to start setting up centralized testing and holding spheres, as well as quarantine areas”
“We need to escalate public awareness preventive measures advocacy. If we are going to eventually lockdown cities, towns and communities, there must be contingency plans for food and materials for family sustenance for that to work”
The former Diplomat, further said that it was where National Emergency Management Agency NEMA and the State Emergency Management Agency SEMA would come in.
He said, “From a complex emergency response perspective, each of the 36 states should by now have multi-disciplinary crisis management and response teams that incorporate the security and military arms, frontline healthcare providers and other first responder teams”
” More importantly, this is the time for the federal government to reach out to states and make huge funding available to them”
“The interventions are worthwhile but hardly adequate. In addition to these, I believe the FGN as a matter of urgency should release at the minimum, N74 billion to the 36 States, the FCT and NCDC for emergency preparedness and response”
” The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) should unilaterally receive N2bn. The proposed funding is exclusive of any funding already released to the Federal Ministry of Health for emergency preparedness”
” If Nigeria must suspend the 2020 budgetary appropriations in order to effectively combat COVID-19, then so be it. Not responding robustly now, will in the longer term cost Nigeria more, financially, materially, morally and certainly, in terms of human casualties. We must seize the moment” Obaze said
From my humble policy perspective, besides the civil war period from 1967 to 1970, it can be envisaged that if and when COVID-19 hits Nigeria fully, the challenge and national mobilization required to respond adequately will require the replication another civil war-situation capacity.
Leave a Reply