The lesson Coronavirus is teaching Nigeria

Nigeria is facing the consequences of the several years of the neglect of the health system and research institution, the same goes for the rest of the world under the Coronavirus pandemic, but the Coronavirus is teaching them to sin no more.

Estimated 2million people are expected to die because of Coronavirus in Nigeria, and it has already claimed the lives of about 600 people in the country, including the Chief of Staff and the bodyguard of the President Federal Republic of Nigeria, while two Governors spent days in isolation fighting for their lives and they narrowly escaped the death by Coronavirus.

One thing that Nigerian politicians, top government functionaries and the rich take for granted before now was wasting money that should have been invested in the health sector of the country in seeking medical help oversee, they spend huge amount of money to travel for medical treatment in the UK, USA, India and whenever they can get good health care, but this virus shut them in, and everybody in the country have to suffer from their negligence in the dilapidated hospitals that are available in Nigeria with no basic facilities.

Another lesson that Nigeria is learning is to invest more in research, the researchers in Nigeria has been reduced to speculators who only read and manage to adapt the discovery made by other researchers across the world; this had made the countries researcher ill equip to respond rapidly to Coronavirus. The Nigerian tertiary institutions are always on strike because the government is not funding themNigerians hash economic condition, under employment, poor working conditions, unpaid salary has made several medical personnel to run abroad in search of greener pastures, it was as if their efforts and labour were not appreciated, and until the outbreak of Coronavirus, there was nothing like hazard allowance for the Nigerian medical personnel.As a matter of fact, the yearly fund budgeted for medical center at the Presidential Villa is diverted to the account of the greedy politicians, the fact that the first Lady of Nigeria lamented about the deplorable condition of the medical center, Mrs. Aisha Buhari said, “If somebody like Mr. President can spend several months outside Nigeria, then you wonder what will happen to a man in the street.

She added that. “Few weeks ago, I was sick as well. They advised me to take the first flight out to London; I refused to go. I said I must be treated in Nigeria because there is a budget for an assigned clinic to take care of us. If the budget is N100m, we need to know how the budget is spent. 

Along the line, I insisted they call Aso Clinic to find out if the X-ray machine is working.

They said it was not working. They didn’t know I was the one that was supposed to be in that hospital at that very time.”

I know that head will definitely roll now that Mr. President loses two of his close aid to this virus.

The rich class in Nigeria are also learning that money is not everything, some of them never have the time to stay around their neighbourhood and made themselves useful, instead they flies around the world pursuing their business interest, but now that there is lock down in the world they are grounded, and they are seeing the local challenges of their immediate environment and they had no other option than to join hand with others to solve them.

Nigeria everywhere in the world will definitely have a rethink after this lock down, all those fanciful hospital abroad were carefully built to meet the challenge of a time like this, in fact they are not enough for their own people, therefore all hand must be on the deck to solve the national problem instead of seeking escape with the alternative abroad.

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