Funmilola Ajala
Sir: After five weeks of lockdown, it is critical to assess the gains accrued when the lockdown lasted. But before that, one must not lose sight of the original intent behind the forced home stay. With virologists’ admission that production of vaccines against the virus may take a longer time than anyone could anticipate, global leaders had to invent restrictive measures among their subjects in order to, first, contain the grim reaper and, second, to afford authority ample time needed in expansion of response capacity of healthcare services.
Understandably, Lagos appears to have upped the ante rushing through a combination of public and private endowments to augment the number of Intensive Care Units (ICU) beds and other equally sensitive amenities. Sadly, same cannot be said elsewhere. The more the virus hit new communities, daily, the more visible the point of the country’s shameful reality is driven home. The unexplained spike in death toll in Kano further exposes the hogwash of the system as reports indicate medical personnel have abandoned their duty posts due to lack of personal protective equipment.
In five weeks, Nigeria failed to stretch its daily testing capacity beyond little over a thousand per week. More so, considerable length of time is still lost between when tests are conducted and results released by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). In addition, the few available isolation centres in the country remain a far cry in the face of anticipated exponential surge in infections. As of May 2, only 17, 566 tests had been conducted by the NCDC with 2, 388 confirmed cases and 85 deaths.
The chair of the task force set up by President Buhari to arrest the scourge jolted many when he acknowledged the precarious state of health facilities in the country. Days after the inauguration of the task force, Boss Mustapha lamented that “the country lacked what is required to handle the situation”. It is a sad statement of fact that the elite class in Nigeria can no longer feign ignorance of the very fate they imposed on the herding citizens on the wrong end of the social ladder. The mosquito-infested public hospitals now represent a collective shame of a nation as medical tourism to India, the United Kingdom, and China is suspended, at least for the time being.
More than any other revelation, Covid-19 has exposed the effects of decades of lack of planning, prodigal spending, financial improbity, and dearth of leadership direction among Nigeria’s ruling class. Unfortunately, the most lethal of the consequences is being felt by teeth-gnashing downtrodden in the society. A careful look at the trajectory of the epidemic suggests that Nigeria is just entering the most daring period of the crisis. In the last week of April, a thousand new cases were reported totaling 2,000 overall; it took two months between February and April to reach the first thousand. At the risk of sounding unnecessarily alarmist, the battle so far is a child’s play compare to what lies ahead. A compromised security system that has failed to stop inter-state journeys couple with the unwilling carriers of the disease in ‘deported’ Almajiris can only add to the spiraling statistics in northern Nigeria.
India is one of the countries with longest nationwide lockdown. Despite the United Nations’ estimate that as many as 400million Indians are at risk of extreme poverty, Prime Minister Narendra Mordi has refused to yield position maintaining that if the apocalyptic contagion was not handled well, “then our country, your family will go backwards by 21 years.” At the onset, Mordi was criticized for lagging in initiative but India has since increased its test laboratories from one to two hundred and twenty between January and April.
Nigeria’s neighbour, Ghana may relapse into another round of coronavirus epidemic. After locking down the country for almost one month, President Nana Akufo Addo relaxed restrictions amidst mounting pressure allowing Ghanaians back on the streets. Within days, the wisdom or otherwise of that decision is been debated as new infection rates jump above 60%. Similarly, there is a consensus that Germany’s approach to the virus was perhaps the best the world over. That was until last week of April when major sectors of the economy reopened. Many in ‘Deutschland’ are now worried that the accolades may have been premature, after all, as daily infections appear to be on the rise.
As the breath of fresh air badly missed to hustle for daily bread by the masses is restored, Nigerians need not surrender to the delusion that the worst is over. As Boss Mustapha retorted, the country is only entering a new phase, the one in which people’s disposition to “personal and collective responsibilities” would determine who – and who doesn’t – live to tell the tales of the era in years ahead.
- Funmilola Ajala, Berlin, Germany.
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