EDITORIAL

As against the expectation of the residents of Lagos on a possible lockdown, the State governor, Babajide Sanwoolu announced a partial restriction instead. In his broadcast on Wednesday, he ordered the closure of markets in Lagos especially those for non-essential commodities like food and medicines. While encouraging private organisations to allow their staff to work from home, he reiterated the resolve of his government to deploy law enforcement agencies to ensure compliance.

The decision on partial lockdown was premised on the slightly low contacts contamination of the virus as observed in Lagos. As at the time the decision was made, the official figure for Lagos was 29.

This involves 20 index cases, 5 contact cases and 4 with unknown source. The consensus among the committee was that though the contact tracing net is wide, the identified contacts to all the index cases were fairly negative. What this suggests is that there may be a relative resistance from Nigerians towards contracting the virus even from those already infected.

This assumption on possible resistance could be linked to Nigeria's relatively hot weather at the moment, the high immunity status of the residents and identified contacts and the fact that Novel Corona Virus is not localized. That is, it is alien to this environment. If this is true as assumed, Lagos and Nigeria by extension should look forward to an early exit from the scourge.

While the federal government has been careful as to placing a blanket restriction order on the country, States of the federation have been placing its own form of restriction order including ban on crossing of state boundaries. States like Rivers, Abia, Anambra. Ebonyi and Kano have issued press statements in this regard.

Meanwhile, Lagos State government believes that its phased restriction (lockdown) implementation plan should do the magic. The plan includes;

PHASE 1 – Ban on Social gathering of more than 50 persons (This includes places of worships, parties etc)

PHASE 2 – Ban on Social gathering of more than 20 persons (This includes markets, Malls, Supermarkets). This ban limits markets activities to only essential goods like medicines and edible food items.

Governor Sanwo-Olu believes that with the co-operation of the people of Lagos and corporate organisations, there should be a great improvement at this level. It however reserves the plan for outright lockdown which is the PHASE 3. This will only provide exemption to only essential service providers like Security, Medical Services, Media, Telco, Power and emergency agencies.

Now that the figure for Lagos has risen to 32 and 51 in total for the whole nation, Eons Intelligence believes that if Lagos gets it right, Nigeria will get it right. We therefore enjoin all residents to support government restriction orders with unequaled patriotism.