These palliatives won’t do

PERHAPS  nothing illustrates the inadequacy of the palliative measures rolled out to cushion the effects of the ongoing Covid-19 lockdown in several parts of the country than the angry protests of distressed citizens. The situation is particularly severe in Lagos, one of the states where the Federal Government imposed a 14-day lockdown. President Muhammadu Buhari announced the 14-day shutdown of business, economic and social activities in Lagos, Ogun and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, to slow down the exposure of Nigerians to the coronavirus pandemic, but many residents of Lagos  and the FCT are yet to get any palliatives. Hungry and angry, they have been handing down ultimatums. The situation is the same in several other states where the government imposed partial lockdowns.

In particular, the issue of palliatives has been mired in controversy. In most cases, residents of the affected states have complained bitterly that they only heard of the palliatives promised by the state government but did not receive anything. They wondered how the government intended them to cope with worsening hunger and poverty, having forced them to stay indoors without providing foodstuff or stipends. It is certainly troubling that in the affected states, palliatives are either non-existent or negligible. The internet is suffused with videos of angry citizens wondering how a large building housing scores of poor residents was expected to cope with four loaves of bread, or how entire neighbourhoods were expected to survive on a few congos of rice packed in cellophane bags.

To say the least, the protestations are entirely justified. It is apparent that the governments of the affected states failed to exercise due diligence in rolling out palliatives. If what has been revealed through media reports are anything to go by, the so-called palliatives are no better than children’s packages. Just how can a neighbourhood comprising hundreds of poor residents be expected to make do with a quarter of a bag of rice? How can entire households survive on a few cups of rice, beans and gari for two weeks?

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The situation has also been worsened by corruption and political partisanship. In many of council areas, distraught residents have bemoaned the request for membership cards of the ruling party as a precondition for obtaining palliatives. To be sure, the governments of the affected states gave stern warnings to the officials saddled with the distribution of relief packages not to allow political considerations to influence their activities. However, the warnings have been breached with impunity, evidently because of the lax enforcement mechanisms in place. Ideally, the state governments should have set up separate teams to monitor the compliance of the distribution agents with the well-intentioned orders aimed at facilitating the provision of palliatives to the most vulnerable populations.

Worse still, the relief packages, negligible as they are, have been distributed in an atmosphere of utter chaos, with residents often engaging one another in shouting matches and even fisticuffs in the bid to obtain them. This has made utter nonsense of the social distancing rules enacted by the government to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. As it were, there is a distinct possibility that large populations of citizens have now contracted the deadly virus in the bid to obtain the negligible palliatives provided by state governments. If that is the case, then the trajectory of the pandemic which has claimed thousands of lives across the globe has now widened in the country, and only serious efforts by governments across all levels can reverse the situation.

At the moment, many Nigerians are hungry, angry and in a desperate mood for immediate relief. The government, the private sector and public-spirited individuals must act immediately, and provide the badly needed relief while stepping up advocacy on social distancing. There must be massive distribution of relief items devoid of corruption and political considerations. Hand sanitizers and face masks must be subsidised and made available to the masses. Needles to say, Nigeria must become a country with viable records. It is a shame that state governments don’t know how many people they govern, what their status is, or even where they live.

NIGERIAN TRIBUNE