Romanus Ugwu, Abuja

The Director-General of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), Salihu Moh. Lukman, has warned that Nigeria will record worst casualties than America and Europe should the citizens continue to defile the lockdown order by the federal government to curtail the spread of Coronavirus pandemic.

In a statement he issued in Abuja, titled, ‘Fight against spread of COVID-19 in Nigeria: Issues and factors hindering success’, the PGF DG, suggested an expansion in the membership of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) especially with members of the National Assembly.

He further lamented the gravity of conspiracy theories and problems of ownership of the pandemic by the citizens, arguing that they have caused more damage to the fight against the world health disease.

“The fact is that given the poor state of our hospitals, if we are unable to contain the spread of COVID-19 in Nigeria, the experiences of Italy, Spain, United States, France, etc. will be child play. Should that happen, records of cases and deaths could be phenomenal. Combinations of high incidences and poor records of citizens in the country having medical conditions bordering on tuberculosis, high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, etc. it is hard to imagine how, as a nation we want to risk such a possibility,” the DG noted.

He further argued that: “the alarming records of the pandemic across the world hardly convinced Nigerians on the need to ensure that the fight against the spread in the country succeed. Instead, it is perceived by many as an attempt by government and their supporters to divert attention from the issue of ensuring that it provide palliatives to Nigerians for the lockdown to succeed.

“This opens the gate for another variant of conspiracy theory aimed at diverting attention from some alleged corrupt practices around the execution of the fight against the spread of COVID-19 in the country.

“Three issues can be used to demonstrate this. The first was the controversy around the issue of Chinese medical team coming to assist Nigeria. Many Nigerians, including Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) opposed the decision of the Presidential Task Team on COVID-19 to accept the offer of assistance from the Chinese medical team.

“Some alleged that Italy began to experience exponential increases in number of COVID-19 cases after accepting similar assistance from Chinese medical team. The whole issue around the support being offered was reduced to sentimental considerations. The national conversation wasn’t around the question of evaluating preparedness to contain the spread of COVID-19.

“Secondly, around the same period when the issue of the assistance from Chinese medical team dominated our media, there was the report of the session between the leadership of the National Assembly, led by both the Senate President, Ahmed Lawal and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, on the one hand and Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Sadiya Umar Farouk, on the other hand.

“The leadership of the National Assembly were reported to have queried the Minister about management of palliatives to cushion the effect of the lockdown. In particular, there was the question of the database being used to disburse the conditional cash transfer of N20,000 to qualified beneficiaries.

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“The third event was the unfortunate fire in the office of the Accountant General of the Federation. Although completely unrelated to the whole question of containing the spread of COVID-19 in the country, some Nigerians alleged that the fire outbreak in the office of the Accountant General was because of the insistence of the leadership of the National Assembly that all resources being disbursed as palliative under the COVID-19 campaign, must be accounted for.

“Some even alleged that N2 trillion has already been released by the Federal Government. Across most social media platform, the allegation was that the fire outbreak in Accountant General Office was aimed at destroying records and therefore sabotaging any potential investigation into the disbursement of palliatives to citizens, including the N20,000 conditional cash transfer.

On the shift from containing the spread to management of palliatives, the DG wrote: “Although many officials of government attempted to respond to these allegations with clarifications, which should have helped to douse the public suspicion around issues of resource management and disbursement, the problem of trust remains a strong factor militating against citizens ownership of social distancing initiatives of government, including lockdown.

“What is very clear is that for many citizens, the debate is not about containing the spread of COVID-19. Rather, the issue of management of public resources directed at cushioning the effect of the lockdown is the main concern,” he noted in the statement.

“Without doubt, both the PTF, led by the SGF, Boss Mustapha and State governments, especially Lagos State have been briefing Nigerians on daily basis, but given the high focus on palliatives as requirement for the fight against COVID-19 to succeed, the unintended national impression has been created to the effect that COVID-19 is simply a problem of government. At least, that would appear to be the dominant perception by most Nigerians. This is quite worrisome.
On the issues of public engagement and recommendations, he said: “Maybe it is the perilous nature of our orientation that is playing out. Unfortunately, it will appear that low engagement strategy by the PTF on the COVID-19 campaign is also reducing citizens’ ability to own the fight against the spread in the country.

“This is not in any way passing any judgment on the leadership of the PTF in the fight against COVID-19 but to highlight areas requiring urgent attention in order that Nigeria is able to succeed in the fight against the spread of COVID-19.

What are these recommendations? First, the PTF need to broaden the scope of its membership at two levels. It needs to approach the question of expansion based on the strategy of using communication to mobilise the participation of everyone both governmental and non-governmental.

“Communication should not be about simply passing information to citizens about what government is doing. It should be more about accommodating the views and interests of Nigerians through their representatives. This can come about through the deployment of some approaches that allows identified representatives to interact with members of the PTF and through such interactions influence decisions.

“It is good to have all senior federal government functionaries driving the process and consulting other arms of governments – National Assembly and Governors. This however can be strengthened by going beyond consultations. The reality is that consultation alone, will hardly produce the needed ownership and synergy of initiatives even within governmental structures.

“In fact, one can argue that some of the critical observations of the leadership of the National Assembly from the session with the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and more recently with the PTF is a confirmation of the limitations of consultations. What is required is that, depending on the terms of reference of the PTF as given by the President, it should consider co-opting members of the National Assembly to join the Committee,” he suguessed in the statement.