Act now, save Nigeria from Spanish, Chinese experience, Voice of Reason tells Buhari

Renowned Yoruba Intelligentsia group, the Voice of Reason (VOR), on Sunday, joined other Nigerians and groups to make a daring appeal to President Muhammad Buhari, to act decisively by developing a national containment strategy that will help wage war against the spread of the coronavirus in Nigeria.

The VOR, a group comprising of eggheads and professionals of Yoruba people from all sectors of the economy appealed to the Buhari led administration to act fast against the spread of the virus to save Nigerians from the Chinese, Spanish, Italian and the American experience where about 24, 000 people had died from the COVID-19 disease.

VOR in a statement by its chairman, Dr Olufemi Adegoke, applauded the Babajide Sanwo-Olu led administration of Lagos State on efforts taken so far to curtail the spread of the virus in the commercial city but suggested that a co-ordinated national containment is needed now to ensure Nigerians do not die in drove.

“Voice of Reason hereby calls on the Federal Government to immediately provide leadership in this COVID-19 pandemic crisis. It is obvious that countries that have escaped the Italian and Spanish trajectory of this pandemic have had to take very aggressive steps to break the infection path. The only way to achieve this is to ensure that potentially infected people are not moving around and infecting all with whom they come into contact. The ideal would be to self-isolate without coercion.

“Some high Government officials who should know better have come back to the country and mingled with other high Government officials and private sector moguls without observing the 14-day self-isolation advisory. A large number of their primary contacts beyond their secondary and subsidiary levels of contacts underscores the need to go beyond voluntary self-isolation. Many states, in the absence of adequate action by the Federal Government, are embarking on a motley pattern of shutdowns to protect their citizens. It is time for the Federal Government and indeed the President and Commander-in-Chief to show leadership and rise to this emergency and truncate the calamitous trajectory of the infection in Nigeria,” VOR said.

According to the organisation, for the nation to achieve this, “we must adopt the best practices that have worked elsewhere. We are in a good place to ensure we never get to deal with the kind of crisis faced by China, Italy, USA and Spain. The only way to achieve that is to move immediately and effect a national containment strategy. Lagos State says it will not introduce a mandatory total lockdown until the number of infections reaches a yet to be defined critical point.

“Who can determine how soon such a critical point will creep upon us? Would this number be with or without testing? The geometric growth in infection in other countries suggests that no-one can predict when that tipping point will be reached. While we applaud the efforts of Lagos State so far, we think delaying the deployment of a national strategy of containment would be a grave mistake. Apart from our inability to control the growth of the infection, the low testing capacity throughout the country and apparent current low infection rates may be giving us a false sense of comfort. This was the case in the United States where the initial low rate of infection has dramatically increased as testing capacity improves; sadly this is accompanied by a high number of fatalities.

“There is a need to borrow from the experience of others, and to suspect that such a ‘surge ‘ may indeed take place in our land if we don’t take appropriate steps. It is better to ‘overprotect’ the society than to come back in four weeks and be lamenting about doing too little too late. Needless lives could be lost by delay. We should take a cue from South Africa and India. We cannot move too fast. Our medical infrastructure and facilities, in scope, number and sophistication, are poor compared to any of the countries already overwhelmed by the burgeoning numbers of cases they are faced with,” VOR said.

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