Hardball
On the virtual eve of lifting the COVID-19 lockdown in Lagos, FCT Abuja and Ogun states, scary figures tumble from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) test laboratories.
That looks rather ominous since, going by the upsurge, livelihood (which is what the lifting of the lockdown amounts to) appears set to snuff out the very life itself!
That is the grand irony of the COVID-19 pandemic season. It is as perplexing as it isn’t pretty!
As at April 29, NCDC tests revealed 196 Coronavirus cases, one more than the 195 of April 28, hitherto the highest on a single day. Now, the question: is the country now fated to rising COVID-19 cases, effect from April 28?
Will April 30 cases be higher than the previous day, but lower than the subsequent one? When then will we flatten the curve, and lower cases of the infected? Now that the lockdown is being lifted, will livelihood then not become a threat to life itself, given the unruly attitude and general indiscipline among our people?
Take Lagos, the hustling capital of Nigeria and the national epicentre of the virus. By the April 29 figures, Lagos had 87, compared with Kano (24), Gombe (18), Kaduna (17), FCT (16), Katsina (10), Sokoto (8), Edo (7), Borno (6) and Yobe, Ebonyi and Adamawa (one each).
While Kano appears to be on a hot chase to elbow FCT as the second most affected area, Lagos remains firmly at the top of the national burden. Yet, the lockdown is about to be lifted in Lagos!
After a 35-day presidential lockdown, the cases in Lagos keep rising though there were two days in-between when Lagos recorded zero cases. Also, Lagos has achieved good and robust records in nursing COVID-19 patients back go health. Still, what would happen after anyone can go anywhere, as the lockdown is gradually lifted?
True, players in the formal economy would put in control measures. But who controls the huge informal sector: the pulsating Oshodi and Oke-Arin markets, the ever-unruly and hygienically challenged Danfo operators, the neighbourhood mechanics/car spray workers/vulcanizers, the auto spare sellers who have virtually been “starving” at home all through the lockdown period, and the million and millions of fatalistic city denizens, still living in denial, with their brusque dismissal: “Olorun lo nso wa jare”! (Only God can protect!)
Who will moderate the commercial bus drivers and their blind greed? Who will control desperate passengers, that grimly pack themselves like sardines, in a desperate bid to hit office or home fast? Who will give hustling Lagos urgent tutorials on social distancing to beat Coronavirus?
Lifting the lockdown could be welcome freedom to go ye and hustle, after being cooped, in a pen, for 35 days. But it could also mean Lagos bracing itself for far, far more COVID-19 cases!
The government, both federal and Lagos State, should just blitz the mass media with helpful emergency enlightenment, while the authorities try to enforce some sanity. Still, COVID-19 Lagos enters uncharted territories.
May legitimate livelihood not snuff out life itself!
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