By now, if we are a serious nation, we would be taking stock of how the battle against Covid-19 was waged. The infection gave Nigeria a good two months head start to begin the preparation of how to tackle it before it landed on our shores. It had started decimating lives in January and February in other countries before it knocked on our door, ever so feebly, late February this year.
Yet, who has questioned President Muhammadu Buhari on how effectively the on-going Covid-19 war was waged. When and how has he given due account to Nigerians? Has anybody thought of asking him how it was possible for hordes of young Northern men to so migrate from the North to the South that many Southerners began to envisage a preparation for a Northern invasion of the South?
Hey, I must grant here and now that those who raised that hue and cry muddled up the issue terribly. It is a fact that while the North to South movement could have been a cascade of some sort, with travellers concealing themselves among cattle and goats, among bags of foodstuff and the like, the traffic was certainly not one-sided. Thus, there was also a South to North movement and a South to South flow of human beings, but interestingly, only the North to South drift evoked fears of dastardly results other than those of Covid-19 infections.
That is because of the noxious insurgency with which Boko Haram, the Bandits and killer herdsmen have tainted the Northern part of the country. For years now, Boko Haram heartless killers have been spreading mayhem, blood and fire across the North-East geo-political zone, while their brothers in outrageous blood-letting are daily replicating their hatred for peace and civility in the North-East, the President’s own geo-political zone. For now, the two zones lie almost helpless before those hell’s angels.
In the other zones – The South- West, South-East, South-South and North-Central, an amorphous group called mainly “suspected herdsmen” have apparently sworn to give those beyond the Boko Haram and the Bandits areas of influence, a test of hell. Owing to that deadly dread the killer herdsmen have sowed in the hearts of those in the Middle-Belt and the South, they kept decrying the exodus of young men into the South as being part of a plot to invade and destabilize the South.
Unfortunately, the main issue there was never addressed; the question of how there could have been a mass movement at all when the entire nation was supposed to be under a lockdown that was designed to check the spread of Coronavirus infection in Nigeria. Instead, the voices heard complaining, focused on their fear of attacks by herdsmen. Thus, the South to North current of that great human ocean waves, never registered in discussion sites; so too the South to South one.
The result is that an unsuspecting Nigeria remained placidly uncaring even as Covid-19 was gradually eating into the fabric of the nation. Once the lockdown began to be eased, and people began to take the gamble of venturing from their homes, it was only natural that Covid-19 infection will be spreading across the country in a double quick march.
Nigeria has a Commander-in-Chief of both the Armed Forces and the Para-Military forces, and he is the one I hold responsible for the success or failures of those security services and agencies. The result of the lousy jobs the security agencies did in allowing almost a free movement of people across the nation, when a lockdown was supposed to be on to stem a deadly spread of a deadly disease is now clear for all to see.
Just a single case of Covid-19 infection was in Nigeria on 27th February 2020. The Honourable Minister of Health announced this at a press briefing at 9.30am that day, promising that the nation was up to the task of keeping the infection at bay and keeping Nigerians healthy. Nigerians clapped for him. Loading…
That same day the nation activated “A multi-sectoral national emergency operations centre (EOC) at level 3, which is the highest level of response in the country for public health emergencies. This is led by NCDC”, as the announcement went.
Swinging into action, “NCDC deployed two Rapid Response Teams to Lagos and Ogun States respectively on 28th February. Lagos and Ogun State EOCs are leading contact tracing and other response activities in respective states”, came another reassuring announcement.
Actually, there was very little reason to worry; the entire world had all of 85,403 confirmed cases (95.5% cases in China); 2,924 deaths; 49 countries affected; three countries affected in Africa: Egypt, Algeria and Nigeria, a day after the infection landed in Nigeria (29th February 2020). Nigerians were busy on the social media laughing at the Chinese for their dietary inclinations.
Fast forward to Friday 26th of June – just four months later; Nigeria recorded a frighteningly high 684 confirmed Coronavirus cases were reported in 19 states – Lagos (259), Oyo (76), Katsina (69), Delta (66), Rivers (46), Ogun (23), Edo (22), Osun (22), Ebonyi (21), FCT (20), Kaduna (16), Ondo (10), Imo (9), Abia (9), Gombe (5),Plateau (4), Bauchi (4), Ekiti (2) and Anambra (1)
So far, a total of 23,298 Nigerians have been infected, 15,504 (67%) males and 7,794 (33%) females. So, it has been attacking more males (the family breadwinners) than females (the care-givers). Surprisingly, while the word out there is that it has been decimating the old and very old, the facts on ground proves that a lie; so far, it has attacked those in the 31 – 40 age group the most; 24% of those infected so far.
Yes, it is true that Coronavirus has proved to be decidedly lethal when it attacks those with underlying health challenges, bit it kills peoples of all ages, all the same. Most unfortunately, while it was once thought that Covid-19 was a disease for overseas travellers, it has so far infected a small number of those with any history of outside sojourn – 409 persons or 2% and those infected who had contact with that two percent were 5, 511 or 24%. Now here is the real surprise; 17,380 infected people could not trace the infection to any known source; that is a whopping 74%. Yet, all is calm so far in Nigeria because only a minuscule number of Covic-19 related deaths have been recorded officially; 554 deaths!
That low number of deaths have given Nigerians a false sense of confidence and a reason to turn the question of how the campaign against Covic-19 is being run. How much did Nigeria learn from the anti-Ebola virus fight? Did anybody remember that Nigeria had an anti-pandemic centre that was set up during the Avian Influenza era?
Instead of building from whatever foundations the nation had, the anti-Covid-19 war was started without recourse from whatever experience we had gained before. Most of all, how Mr. President allowed a certain Minister to be spending huge sums of money in purportedly feeding school children while all schools closed owing to a lockdown, beats the imagination. And what sort of palliatives are given to adults on those children’s behalf when there is nothing to identify an adult as having children in school and the number of children each of such adults have? From which date base yielded the names of the beneficiaries? And do the palliatives keep multiplying? If so, how much were given to such beneficiaries, such that the palliatives, once given to a particular family for their children, are never given again?
And how has the Minister accounted for such palliatives-giving?
This last question brings up the real problem now facing the nation; that the average person on the street now doubts the very fact that Coronavirus has a presence in Nigeria. They now believe that the pandemic has been hyped in Nigeria just to grant some unscrupulous government officials the chance to swindle the government of funds.
Yet, there is a real and present danger. The incidence of Coronavirus infection has been spreading in Nigeria and world-wide too, instead of slowing down. Nigeria has tested only 127,158 samples, a most meagre, even miserable, amount.
Globally, the total number of infections have reached 9,473,214 with 484,249 deaths. As the infection is still spreading out there among the nations, it means that as external and internal air travels will soon resume, Nigeria has to brace up for a further rash of infections.
This is because this has actually happened in places where the initial lockdowns have been lifted or relaxed. New cases of the coronavirus rose in Europe last week, for the first time in months. The increase was driven by 11 countries that have had a “very significant resurgence”, Hans Kluge, head of the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, said on Friday. And he warned: if adequate care is not taken, unchecked, such outbreaks will “push health systems to the brink once again”.
The countries and territories with notable increases in cases are Sweden, Armenia, Republic of Moldova, North Macedonia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, and Kosovo, according to a WHO spokesperson.
Kluge said there had also been outbreaks in Poland, Germany, Spain and Israel in schools, coal mines and food production settings, but authorities there had responded quickly. “Where new clusters of cases appeared, these have been controlled through rapid and targeted interventions,” said Kluge.
Germany, for instance, saw new daily cases rise from around 300 to over 600 last week, after an outbreak in a slaughterhouse. In response, the Guetersloh area re-imposed lockdown conditions.
Several US states have also seen increases in the number of new coronavirus cases. California, Florida and Texas, the three states with the biggest populations in the US, are seeing rising numbers of covid-19 infections, with several thousand new cases a day.
President Buhari must rejig the fight against Coronavirus because a new spike will occur in Nigeria …and if we do not prepare adequately for it, the entire country may turn a burial ground.
Credit: https://www.independent.ng
