COVID-19 Nigeria by Mories Atoki & Georgios Radoglou

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None of these were necessary to combat the epidemicEbola and as such, did not come into play for the dynamicsto be better understood, refined and deployed for the“global COVID-19 pandemic” hence what is beingwitnessed today. As a matter of fact, one key dynamic thatcame to play with this global pandemic which was notpresent during the Ebola crisis was this – Nigeria’s elitescould not travel out of the country to access quality medicalcare. This singular happenstance is the cornerstone thatmany believe will alter the mindsets of those charged withgoverning Nigeria – the realization that the only medicalAirports across the country shutdownaccess that will be available is their country’s own publichealthcare system, a system that is ordinarily debilitated bypoor coordination, a lack of accountability, few incentives to improve performance and a lack of resources at the frontline.These problems can be traced back to Nigeria’s competitive political settlement where the political elite frequently use stateresources to maintain the support of their allies and to co-opt potential rivals into accepting the status-quo. This situation,while enabling a semblance of political stability in the short term, only serves to undermine the effectiveness of the publicsector in the long term as seen in the case of the health sector where the average citizen is left without access to quality oraffordable healthcare.Granted, while the government seems to recognize moments of catastrophic threat and pull together political and technicalresources to head it off, this is not a viable or sustainable approach and cannot be practical. For instance, Nigeria hasrecently had Lassa fever and Avian flu epidemics, but these were not addressed with the kind of technical, coordinated andefficient leadership seen during Ebola or COVID-19 and why should it? Is it not time for the entire healthcare system to berestructured and reorganized to manage public health efficiently and contribute to the Nigerian Nation’s resilience for thecoming challenges?Tragically, COVID-19 is affecting Nigerian society much more broadly and deeply than the Ebola outbreak did. To respondeffectively, the country will need to strengthen the capacity of the public sector across the board. Federal State governments,as well as the overarching Federal Government, must each lead their populations through the health and economic crisis.The legacies of past governors will be significant, but each state can chart its own course through the pandemic. Some maygenerate narratives of unity, such as in Ekiti State, where the governor has announced a 50 percent pay cut for his politicalappointees in order to fund the state’s crisis response while others abdicate responsibility laying blame on the FederalGovernment for abandoning its responsibility to the States while citizens die in droves as in the case of Kano State. However,there are also deeply contrary extreme narratives where state governments deny the existence of the disease within theirborders as in the case of Kogi State where the governor has refuted the NCDC’s report of infections in the state and on theopposite the governor of Benue state seeking economic benefits for his state by inflating the negligible COVID-19 infectioncases and maintaining them at the same level for weeks.Following the rapid spread of COVID-19 in Nigeria after the lockdown, there are growing calls for sincerity on the parts ofthe authorities, the health workers and citizens.Graves in Kano following the state's government’s slow response
It also demands vigilance from civil society organizations and the mass media to foster accountability. Front lineorganizations and institutions tasked with improving health outcomes in the country must commence support to aid theefforts and mitigate the risks and hazards to the Nigerian society by engaging in continually effective actions including butnot limited to:1) Campaigning for an opening of the borders for imports of quality food (basically protein), improve customs and importprocedures, eliminate middlemen by finding ways to sell at lower prices to the end consumer. Post COVID-19 there will beno room for profiteering middlemen who do not contribute anything to the supply chain but holding up their open hands tocollect an unjustified share, while contributing to an unnecessary increase of cost for the end consumer2) Providing cheap, qualitative and rapid response test kits in abundant quantity and help the quick identification and instantresponse to infected persons timely and spatially and only in second level with expensive and rare PCR machines andtests, which apparently limits Nigeria’s testing ability significantly
Page 1 and 2: Mories AtokiCEO ABCHealthGeorgios R
Page 3 and 4: Graph above: Nigeria Healthcare spe
Page 5: airports continued to operate, rece

COVID-19 Nigeria by Mories Atoki & Georgios Radoglou

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