“Lockdown has immediate ramifications for individuals who live on a hand-to-mouth basis, and for the networks of their dependents. If people cannot eat, they will not obey a lockdown, nor is there any reason, practical or moral, for them to do so.”

– Alex Broadbent, ‘Lockdown is wrong for Africa.’

Once again, the lockdown in parts of Nigeria as a way of mitigating the coronavirus, akaCOVID-19, pandemic, is a step in the right direction.

At least, for those who believe, disease pandemics are signs of the end of the age (Matthew 24). That settled, it is obvious that COVID-19 has come to expose the level of Nigeria’s underdevelopment.

It has innocently painted a glimmer picture of the poverty in the land which, hitherto, was unknown!

Tragically, as at the time of writing this piece, there is nothing on ground to suggest that our leaders are conscious of the grave implications of this malaise, let alone demonstrate the willingness to tackle it head-on.

As of today, we don’t have all the facts about coronavirus disease; neither do we have accurate figures of how many people have been infected, nor the capacity to train those who are doing the testing and contact tracing aspects of the healing process.

We don’t have the drugs or vaccines for combating the pandemic or factual knowledge about the demography of the locked-down population, which is also key to certain decisions about its management.

It is even doubtful if Nigeria has the capacity to process information about the disease with a view to putting out clear directives to the field operatives, medical personnel and frontline workers in the battle against this invisible enemy.

Anyway, ‘COVID-20’ may just be around the corner unless concrete steps are taken to contain the ‘reigning’ COVID-19, currently ravaging this ailing country with relentless recklessness.

As the uncertainty in this sometimes lonely world grows, there’s a general feeling that people are getting impatient with the lockdown.

We are now in a period of uncertainty when despair is not only setting in, socioeconomics statistics is also not looking good globally. With each passing day, jobs are becoming increasingly at risk and small businesses are facing hard times, even as economies are shutting down.

Already, the Federal Reserve Bank has warned that, between April and June, this year, 47 million jobs may be lost in the United States of America, even as ‘God’s own country’ may experience recession.

Ditto for many developed nations!

Then, one can only imagine the likely fate of a third world country like Nigeria, with a weak economy and a struggling healthcare system, which is apparent, even, to the blind!

Quite frankly, the days that follow the resolution of COVID-19 crisis in Nigeria promise to be as revelatory as they will be tense and troubling!

Facts will become the gifts to give: some altruistic, others, self-serving! Some things, we may know; some, shrouded in secrecy, while others may never be revealed.

Where necessary, governments will set up probe panels to unravel alleged underhand deals during interventions, but, typical of governments in this part of the world, the Nigerian society runs the risk of being permanently kept in the dark!