Nigeria’s COVID-19 lockdown: A bandwagon effect?

THE scale of COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented. As of 13th of June 2020, there was a total of 7,728,045 cases and 428,056 fatalities worldwide according to the John Hopkins University Coronavirus resource centre. As part of the global effort to control the pandemic, many countries, including those in Sub-Saharan Africa have gone into lockdown. By early April 2020, an estimated 3.9 billion people or half of the world’s population was living in some form of lockdown. Although lockdowns may be effective in slowing the spread of COVID-19, researchers at the Yale School of Management have shown that benefits to developing countries may come at the risk of economic downturn and related hunger, morbidity, and mortality. These risks are particularly important for African countries where social welfare is not robust, and governments cannot afford to pay for lockdowns as argued by Charles Soludo, a former Governor of the Nigerian Central Bank. Suffice to say that it is not an easy decision for countries to go into lockdowns. One would, therefore, expect leaders to have clear metrics informing the decision to go into lockdowns and when to ease restrictions.

The first case of COVID-19 in Nigeria was discovered on the 27th of February 2020. By March 29, the country had confirmed 97 cases and 1 death. In response, the president of the country announced a restriction of movement in 2 states (Lagos and Ogun) and the Federal Capital Territory (Abuja) for an initial period of 2 weeks. Before the announcement, the highest single-day case detection seen was 16 cases. The lockdown was later extended for another 2 weeks on 13th April, even as testing capacity increased and the number of confirmed cases continued to rise. By May 2nd, the president in a national address announced measures to incrementally ease lockdowns. However, at the time, the number of daily confirmed cases had risen to a level significantly higher than the period preceding the initial decision to go into lockdown in March. As of June 11, average daily new cases seen in the month of June was 399 cases, a far cry from the numbers seen in March. Yet, the government has not reversed its decision to start to reopen the country.

It appears that Nigeria, having gone into lockdown prematurely when cases were minimal, is ironically beginning to relax lockdown even as cases are getting higher. This begs the question: if a hard lockdown is not an option now with more cases being detected, why was it an option in April? Are current risks posed by COVID-19 objectively reduced? Were there factors other than Nigeria-specific risks from COVID-19 that influenced the decision to go into lockdown in April? The decision to lockdown Nigeria in the first place is even more curious when one considers how other countries have eased restrictions based on the achievement of clear COVID-19 related milestones. Nigeria’s decision to gradually reopen does not appear to be related to better control of the pandemic but an acceptance of the heavy costs of a lockdown.  Was it not clear from the beginning that the country was ill-equipped to handle the type of blanket stay-home order for citizens that was attempted in April?

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It is not farfetched to suspect that Nigeria went into lockdown because other countries were going into lockdowns and decision-makers may have been influenced by the bandwagon effect. The bandwagon effect refers to a phenomenon in which the probability of adopting behaviour increases with the proportion of those who have already done so. The WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. Also, in the month of March 2020, a total of 74 countries went into some form of national, state or city lockdowns. As a result, local politicians may have been pressured to follow suit, even when there was no clear indication for going into lockdown, given the associated costs.

The following excerpt from the address of Nigeria’s president to the Nation on the 13th of April provides a window into the bandwagon effect: This is not a joke. It is a matter of life and death. Mosques in Makkah and Madina have been closed. The Pope celebrated Mass on an empty St. Peter’s Square. The famous Notre Dame cathedral in Paris held Easter Mass with less than 10 people. India, Italy and France are in complete lockdown. Other countries are in the process of following suit. We cannot be lax.  It appears that the President is saying, in other words, if other countries are doing it, we must do the same. However, western countries went into lockdowns with the aim of “flattening the curve” and buying time to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. This was not the case in Nigeria.  Moreover, although many of these countries are bigger economies than Nigeria and had measures in place to support citizens, even they could ill-afford the economic downturns as a result of lockdowns. Many leaders are facing enormous pressure to reopen economies.

In defence of the Nigerian government, one may argue that the indication for a lockdown in Nigeria was to delay transmission and buy time to prepare a response (e.g. training health workers, equipping hospitals and laboratories, etc.).However, at the time of the announcement, the rationale provided was to limit spread to other states whilst identifying, tracing and isolating all individuals that may have contacted confirmed cases. Also, couldn’t the decision have been made that since the type of hard lockdown that would be needed to contain the spread of COVID-19 was untenable, the country would develop a contextual response, influenced not by decisions made in other countries, but by the situation in Nigeria. While there may be some evidence that early lockdowns are more effective, couldn’t leaders in Nigeria with all the facts on the ground have realized that the type of lockdown that was attempted was unpracticable, unsustainable, and perhaps unjustifiable.

A scenario in which Nigeria’s decision was a well thought out strategy uninfluenced by the bandwagon effect is presented below:

1. Nigeria seeing that the impact of COVID-19 could be devastating goes into early lockdown to get ahead of the pandemic. Getting ahead of the pandemic means aggressively mobilizing resources to ramp up contact tracing, testing, and quarantine capabilities for the post-lockdown period.
2. Recognizing that a lockdown is a blunt tool with severe costs in an economy where most citizens are in subsistence living, the government goes above and beyond in providing social support for citizens during the lockdown period.
3. Such a response from the government further aids compliance with lockdown as no citizen is, therefore, forced to choose between potential exposure to COVID-19 and near-certain death from hunger because of staying at home without working.
4. Once the government has confidence in its capacity to respond to the pandemic, the government then gradually reopens the country.

The scenario above did not play out. For a country of 200 million people, it appears that Nigeria has massively undertested, even when compared with other African countries. According to data from Our World in Data, as of June, 14, per 1000 people, Nigeria had conducted 0.46 tests (compared to South Africa: 18.92, Ghana: 7.97, Senegal: 3.67 & Kenya:2.21). Although this low number might be because the country has fewer cases, it does not appear to be so. Of the five countries, Nigeria has also conducted the least number of tests for every positive case. What these numbers point to is that Nigeria has stricter criteria for testing when compared to some other African countries which may undermine efforts to limit transmission.

Also, the support by the government during lockdown appears inadequate. While the government offered some palliatives during the lockdown, the consensus among the citizenry seems to be that these palliatives were underwhelming at best.

Nigeria could have achieved more if the decision to go into lockdown was not forced but arrived at as a well thought out strategy that offered the best response to an incredibly difficult situation.  One would hope that if this were to happen another time, decision-makers would be aware of all the forces influencing them. Such leaders can then follow a more contextual approach in making decisions, rather than hopping on the bandwagon.

Sodipo, an alumnus of Harvard University, is a public health specialist.

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