COVID-19 IS ALREADY IN NIGERIA DUE TO THE NEGLIGENCE OF OUR LEADERS BUT WHAT NEXT?

By Great Imo Jonathan

By now we all can say with boldness that Nigeria could have missed being affected by this global pandemic but for the failure of our leaders to act swiftly. I mean leaders across the board, including religious leaders who held services last Sunday despite government instructions and opposition party leaders who are only good at pointing fingers rather than alerting the ruling party to awakening since January.

Now we are in the mix and what we require now is critical thinkers and collective action to save our nation.

Going forward, we need to carefully identify steps that must be taken to address this pandemic in our nation taking cognisance of all factors peculiarly to us. Our country basically operates without data, meaning that we can hardly account for our citizens and our demographies are clearly undefined.

Worst is that our production capacity is abysmal, it cannot guarantee our medical response and consumption needs of our citizens as we go on lockdown.

What must we do aside maintaining good hygiene, drinking hot water with ginger and garlic, and maintaining social distancing?

A. Nationwide lockdown and state by state lockdown must go in effect to prevent the spread of the virus to our hinter communities.
B. Prevention through isolation and social distancing
C. Testing
D. Quarantine
E. Treatment; and
F. Provision of essential household stocks for vulnerable Nigerians, while providing security against desperate elements who may want to invade others out of hunger.

To this effect:

1. Our leaders from federal to state and local government areas must unbundle their greed. They must focus of spending our resources in catering to the needs of our people and they must avoid frivolous spending and stealing. Particularly, the stimulus package being prepared by the Central Bank Of Nigeria must be focused on improving production capacities in the areas of need and giving subvention to local government area authorities who must be at the forefront of fighting this pandemic.

2. 7774 local government areas should suspend payment to all contractors handling road constructions and other none essential contracts that usually mean of looting money. Funds should be deployed to areas necessary to support states and Federal responses.

3. 774 local government areas must provide within the next one week, at least a minimum of 50 locations each for testing. At least within primary health centers they should make provision for people to walk in and be tested in an organized manner. Working hand in hand with private laboratory owners in their locality they should set up these centres and procure quality testing equipment.

4. 774 local government areas must provide within the next one week, 300 quarantine bed places. It could be located in six places, making it 50 beds each. Where there are no government buildings big enough to accommodate such numbers, big churches or mosque within the local government can be taken over, equipped immediately to serve this purpose and buildings can be returned to the owners when this crisis is over after disinfection

5. States and federal government agents should have meetings with all local manufacturers of personal protective equipment that will serve health workers and others on essential duties and see how they can quickly scale up their production using local raw materials.

6. Local manufacturers of disinfectants and curative drugs should be brought in as well and funds should be advanced to them to supply directly to local governments.

7. Large procurement orders should be placed for drugs that can cure or ameliorate the effect of this virus and all supplies should be made directly to treatment centers.

8. Government agencies should itemize essential commodities needed in households and reach out to local producers to see how they can effectively supply to thirty million households in Nigeria. Plans should be made to cover three months of supply in the first phase.

9. The government across the board should make plans for tool adaptations. Especially, logistics vehicles being used by none essential ministries should be handed over to essential workers to improve capacity for distribution of medical equipment, drugs, food and other essentials.

10. Now that most citizens are not at work, already established mechanized farms should be expended and food crops that can be quickly harvested should be focused on.

11. Companies that are into equipment manufacturing, including Innoson should be part of the emergency team. They should be deployed to produce equipment orders than their primary production focus.

12. Since a large percentage of our people are home now, electricity companies should focus on giving power to residential areas and special production areas captured under the emergency response plan.

13. The government should make a plan to pay for electricity bills of households for a period of 3 months to provide citizens the psychological balance to go through this period as they will require some form of comfort, entertainment and access to information while the nations is on lockdown and people observe self-isolation.

14. Telecommunication companies should be encouraged to support government efforts by crediting poor citizens with call credits and data so that they can stay connected with their loved ones on virtual platforms during this trying period.

15. Local government areas and governors should mobilize community leaders and should mandate them to lead the charge in information dissemination to the people and as well give them guidelines for distribution of government intervention products under a transparent process.

16. Governments across the board must work ahead to warn citizens against stigmatization. This is important to encourage those who are already infected to come voluntarily for treatment, thereby cutting down the rate of transmission and ultimately eradicating it in Nigeria.

17. Citizens must go voluntarily for testing and treatment because it is in their own interest to do so. Those who are hiding are likely to die for needlessly because staying at home cannot solve the problem. Rather it will aggravate it and it will lead to the death of a person who is already infected and the person will constitute a danger to others around him or her; which is pure wickedness.

18. We need to create teams of volunteers across communities who are ready to support government efforts to solve this problem. If we confront this virus with the determination and commitment with which Chinese citizens did there is no way we cannot defeat it quickly.

19. Nigerians should not panic beyond measure. Our initial panic reactions are expected. But now we require courage to go against the pandemic. Our best bet now is to confront this head-on. We have the ability within us if we are united in this fight.

20. States that have good facilities for testing, quarantine and treatment but have no record of infection can help other states to take in patients and also help with food production and supplies through established channels.

21. NTA should open a dedicated channel and information center from where accurate information can be disseminated and gotten of steps being taken by the government and on what citizens should be doing per time to avoid fake news.

22. State governments should as well open call centers and multiple desks manned by professionals who can approximately advice citizens and refer them to the appropriate testing and treatment centers to avoid people milling around in a particular place when seeking solutions.

23. People should generally treat malaria this season as the first measure to scaling down pressure and avoiding people who are not suffering from COVID 19 running to treatment centers.

24. NIGERIAN LEADERS MUST ACT LIKE LEADERS AND NOT COWARDS AND SELFISH ELEMENTS. We can take advantage of this challenge to build a national consensus and to develop our capacity beyond measure. Such that we can become self-sufficient in the production of essential commodities and as well develop quality response mechanisms to a national crisis.

We are capable of making a difference in this moment of need. If we fail to do so it is because our leaders failed to mobilize our citizens as the primary role of leadership.

Society Rise And Fall On The Alter Of Leadership

God Protect Nigeria

Great Imo Jonathan