Coronavirus Pandemic, Featured
The inability of Nigeria and most African countries to manage some of the measures being adopted to fight COVID-19, especially the lockdown order has necessitated the call for the review of this measure in order to avert the grave consequences on their economies
By Goddy Ikeh
SINCE the first coronavirus index case was recorded in Nigeria in February and the lockdown that followed soon after to check the spread of the virus in the country, the Nigerian economy has been hit hard by the closure of markets, offices and businesses. There was also the restriction of movement of persons except those involved in essential duties.
The first two-week lockdown was clamped down on Abuja, Lagos and Ogun states on March 30, and the accompanying restrictions resulted in devastating social and economic crisis in these two states and Abuja. The palliatives promised by the federal and state governments for the vulnerable residents of the affected states and Abuja could not address adequately their needs. At the expiration of the first lockdown, President Muharmmadu Buhari announced an extended two-week lockdown, which will end on Monday, April 27. But after the first lockdown was announced, many states came up with measures to check the spread of the virus in their states. The measures announced included lockdown and closure of their borders with neighbouring states. These measures taken by the states extended the hardship to other states and the enforcement of the restriction of movement led to the killing of more than 15 persons by law enforcement agents across the country.
The negative impact of the lockdown on Nigerians pushed the economies of the states into sharp decline in productivity, jobs and revenues losses. The measures also raised security issues, including robbery, banditry and kidnapping.
A recent survey by NOIPolls Ltd on the impact of COVID-19 on Nigerians, revealed that 72% of Nigerians raised concerns over hunger caused by the lockdown order imposed by the federal government and some state governments. The report of the survey released in Abuja on Tuesday, April 14, said: “It is encouraging to know that a substantial proportion of Nigerians believe that lockdown will help in controlling the spread of the disease. However, it is critical to address the concerns citizens have about the lockdown, which include lack of food for the poor (40 percent), that people will die of hunger (21 percent), of economic hardship (13 percent) and the survival of those whose livelihood depends on daily hustling (9 percent) amongst other concerns mentioned.”
The leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has joined the clamour for the relaxation of the lockdown order. Ayuba Wabba, the president of the NLC urged the federal government to consider the plights of vulnerable and poor Nigerians.
Speaking in an interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, NLC Wabba said: “There were some Nigerians who depend on a meal per day for survival.”
He stressed the need to strike a balance at this point in time. “If we are going to extend, we must put in place palliatives that must reach the poor of the poor.
“If there are no conditions or precedents that have been set that people can also conform with, those pronouncements will be violated at the end of the day. We don’t want that to happen, therefore we gave a clear picture of what needs to be done,” he said. Speaking on the Social Investment Programme of the Federal Government, the NLC boss noted that the programme has not yielded the desired results.
“The current use of the Social Investment Platform has not delivered the desired results and, therefore it is a template that is not supposed to be used,” he said. Wabba also wants the government at all levels to ensure that the poorest in their midst who cannot afford a meal per day is well taken care of.
In his review of the measures adopted by the government to fight the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Prof Chukwuma Soludo, noted that in most western countries, the cocktail of response has included a coterie of defensive measures including: border closure; prepare isolation centres and mobilize medical personnel/facilities; implement “stay at home” orders or lockdowns except for food, medicine and essential services; campaign for basic hygiene and social distancing; arrange welfare packages for the vulnerable; and also economic stimulus packages to mitigate the effects on the macro economy.
According to him, many African countries have largely copied the above template, to varying degrees. Piece-meal extensions of “stay at home” or lockdown orders as in many western countries have also been copied in Africa. But he wondered if Africa can really afford lockdowns, and if it can be effective.
He noted that given the social and economic circumstances of Africa and the impending ‘economic pandemic’, can Africa successfully and sustainably defeat Covid-19 by copying the conventional trial-and-error template of the western nations?
According to him, Africa faces two unsavoury options: the conventional template, including lockdowns versus heterodox (creative local) approaches without lockdowns. Both have risks and potential benefits. “Sadly, people will still get the disease and die under both approaches. People will differ on the choice, depending on what is on their decision matrix: data, resources, subjective preferences, and interests, etc. I focus on which option (on a net basis) is achievable in the short to medium term, consistent with our social and economic realities.
“Our thesis is that lockdowns in Africa suffer time-inconsistency problem without a credible exit strategy; is unaffordable and could potentially worsen the twin pandemic—health and economic—in Africa. We call for Africa to press the reset button now, mainstream its collective, simple, smart learning-by-doing solutions that could, in the end, be the African solutions for export to the world. Covid-19 won’t be the end of techno-economic disruptions or health pandemics even in this decade: this is an opportunity to think without the box—to engender greater self-confidence in our capacity to think through our problems, with authentic sustainable solutions.
Next, African states cannot pay for lockdowns. Many countries depend on budget support from bilateral and multilateral donors, and with acute balance of payments problems. They do not even have leg rooms to simply print money. Most are now begging for debt relief and applying for urgent loans from the IMF and the World Bank. In Africa, both the governments and the people are begging for “palliatives”. The most that African states and their private charities can do is “photo charity”—with much fanfare, drop a few currency notes or grains here and there for some thousands when millions are in desperate need, just to be seen to have “done something”. At a fundamental level, most African states do not have credible demographic data to identify and target the most vulnerable.
He maintained in the western societies from where we copied the lockdown/border closure, their citizens are literally paid to stay at home (by silently dropping monies into their accounts plus other incentives). But he noted that despite these palliatives, there are restiveness/ protests in several of these countries with the unrelenting pressure to eliminate the restrictions.
Speaking in the same vein, the Ghanaian leader Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo called on leaders of the West African sub-region to, as a matter of urgency, adopt local methods to fight the coronavirus pandemic, which is wreaking havoc across the globe and not to copy blindly, methods used in other parts of the world.
“I think it is very important that we tailor a specific Ghanaian, African response to the handling of this pandemic and not necessarily copy blindly the methods that are being adopted by countries to the north of us and elsewhere,” President Nana was quoted by Ghanaian media as saying during West African Heads of State virtual ECOWAS Extraordinary Summit on coronavirus pandemic held on Thursday, April 23.
President Nana Addo, who has lifted the lockdown order in his country, commended the Chairman of the ECOWAS, President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger for convening such a crucial meeting to discuss the fight against the deadly virus in the sub-region.
Explaining the local methods to deal with the pandemic, President Nana Addo said Ghana’s approach was based on four principles, which involve mobilizing social forces of the country such as the religious, scientific, academic, political and civil society to deal with the threat posed by the pandemic.
He added that the second approach was that “his administration is led and informed by the science and other data that are assemble and that he is learning from the experience of government of countries that are further down the road in responding to the virus”.
President Nana Addo told his colleagues on the virtual meeting that his country was taking advantage presented by the pandemic by pushing for Ghana Beyond Aid agenda saying, ‘we are trying to limit and stop importation of the virus” since his country has discovered that “virtually all the coronavirus cases we had in Ghana came from travellers who were coming into Ghana”.
In his speech during the teleconference, President Buhari, called on fellow ECOWAS leaders to look beyond the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and tap into various opportunities it has presented for the betterment of lives in member states.
“In every challenging situation such as the current one, there are also opportunities,” he was quoted as saying in the statement by presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina.
“Our region must, therefore, seek to find those opportunities provided by this gloomy global outlook for its benefit by embarking on the implementation of such critical policies, which before now, will be difficult to accept,” he said,
He called on his colleagues to intensify collaboration in order to save the region from the pandemic by sharing their experiences and best practices.
The Nigerian leader noted that unprecedented economic uncertainties, including severe fiscal and foreign exchange constraints, amid a slowdown in global economic growth that most nations were grappling with, have made it imperative for West Africa to refocus on accelerating the implementation of its popular vision of ‘ECOWAS of the people’ by adopting dynamic regional policies aimed at providing relief to the people.
However, the Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, Chikwe Ihekweazu, has assured Nigerians that the lockdown is a temporary measure being adopted to ensure that contact tracing is achieved, while the necessary facilities would be put in place to manage the pandemics in the country. Although he admitted that it was not the job of the NCDC nor the presidential taskforce to announce the lifting of the lockdown order, but he assured that the team would advise the necessary authority to do so.
Speaking on improving the testing for the COVID-19 in the country, Ihekweazu said that. door-to-door testing was not a realistic strategy for more than 200 million Nigerians in the country. According to him, the strategy that has proven to be more feasible, is identifying people who meet the case definition within the communities and getting their samples out for testing.
“It’s not really our strategy to go door-to-door to 200 million Nigerians,” Ihekweazu said during the briefing by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 on Friday, April 24, in Abuja.
– Apr. 25, 2020 @ 19:35 GMT |
A.I
Tags: Ayuba Wabba CBN ECOWAS Nigeria Labour Congress NLC President Mahamadou Issoufou President Nana Addo Prof Chukwuma Soludo
