Thread by @thecableng

OPINION BY SIMON KOLAWOLE: Is it time to lift the lockdown? | TheCable bit.ly/2VVI7Fy

#TheLockdown
#COVID19

Perhaps the biggest COVID-19 debate in Nigeria today is: should the lockdown be lifted? Residents of Lagos state and the federal capital territory (FCT) have been under a lockdown since March 30. The aim is to slow the spread of the virus by limiting public interactions. #COVID19

The night the lockdown started, @NCDCgov reported a total of 131 confirmed cases and two deaths. There were 81 cases in Lagos, 25 in FCT and three in Ogun. As of Friday, almost four weeks later, total confirmed cases had gone up to 1,095, with 32 deaths and 208 discharged.

Someone could look at the figures and conclude that the lockdown has caused more cases and more deaths! The counterfactual, though, is that if we had not locked down, maybe the figures would have been double or triple or quadruple what we have today. bit.ly/2y0GOgv

As the two-week extension ends tomorrow, all eyes are on President Muhammadu Buhari. Will he extend again? Will he relax things?  bit.ly/2y0GOgv via @thecableng

#COVID19

.@CCSoludo, the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has made a robust economic case for African countries to lift the lockdown in a widely circulated article. His argument is basically that the continent cannot afford to copy advanced countries.

Africa’s economy is fundamentally informal and the governments do not have the resources to pay their citizens to stay at home as the US and EU countries are currently doing. There could be a socio-economic disorder in #Africa if these lockdowns continue.

Yet, on the basis of evidence, a strong argument can be made in favour of lockdowns. #Wuhan, the Chinese city that afflicted the world with the novel coronavirus, was under lock and key for 76 days and is now virtually free of the disease.
bit.ly/2y0GOgv via @thecableng

In fact, #China itself has not reported a single death in the last eight days and new infections are now in single or double digits for most days. Italy and Spain were badly hit but are finally flattening the curve after lockdowns. thecable.ng/is-it-time-to-… via @thecableng

.@simonkolawole: Nigerians are getting restless over the lockdown. As things stand, only the well-to-do can cope. They are well-resourced to stay at home. They live in spacious houses, meaning they can really do physical distancing even at home. thecable.ng/is-it-time-to-…

Their food stores are well loaded and can keep getting replenished for weeks and months. They have the savings to keep running their lives at least for the foreseeable future. thecable.ng/is-it-time-to-… via @thecableng

For the poor, who are in the vast majority, everyday they stay at home makes them sink deeper into poverty. The self-employed traders, bus drivers, mechanics, barbers, tailors, hair dressers and bricklayers cannot afford to be home endlessly. They are crying.

#TheLockdown

What then? Should the lockdown be lifted for Nigerians to revive their economic lives so that we can avoid a certain social disorder ahead of us? thecable.ng/is-it-time-to-… via @thecableng

#TheLockdown
#COVID19

.@simonkolawole: I will argue that from what I have learnt about the behaviour of the coronavirus so far, lockdowns are effective — but they cannot be sustained, not in Nigeria where the bulk of the population are self-employed...

...and the government is not buoyant enough to “pay them to stay at home”, as Soludo put it. More so, with confirmed cases going up on a daily basis, we may have to make certain assumptions and...

...accept certain conditions in whatever strategies we decide to adopt to tackle this destructive and disruptive pandemic. thecable.ng/is-it-time-to-… via @thecableng

#COVID19
#TheLockdown