Nairalanders!!! Let's deviate from the usual corona virus discussions.

Look at this scenario:
How would you have coped if, the current corona virus pandemic occurred in the early 1990s. An era when;

Nigerians were still restricted to only the NITEL land line with long queues at phone booths.
There was no social media.
People accessed the internet mostly by visiting cyber cafes.

Cable TV was a luxury in Nigeria.
NTA normally starts transmission by 4pm with the national anthem
Private TV and radio stations were not common.
No mobile money transfer.
No streaming of events online.

Nigerians depended heavily on the post office.
Owning a generating set was a luxury.
There were no bet shops and viewing centres for guys to hangout.

Some many other amenities we see today were not there.

Imagine that the corona virus pandemic occured then, and eventually the government of the day declared a total lockdown, how would have handled the situation. What would have been your options?

Feel free to share your thoughts.

nepa was more reliable then
VHS video player dey
Nintendo games.

we would have coped well.

after all there was lockdown in 1918 those that survived did.

I dey tell you.. No mobile transfers u must go bank or go debtor or tenant house..

Plan B Will Be Activated

There was a similar pandemic in 1918.

1. The banks would have been crowded in the run up to the corona virus lockdown then. Infact, you would have spent two days withdrawing your money....because without cash, you won't have been able to live.

No ATM cards...so nothing like POS, bank transfers required your presence in the bank..and took some days at most (as late as 1999, one of my mates had to transfer money from one bank branch to another...and it took two days..and that was a smooth transaction!)

2.Phones? Most people had no phones, so nothing like bank transfer via phone...it was cash for transactions, or cheque( and lodging the cheque in your account...required your presence in the bank again!)

(N.B ATM's were present in Lagos as far back as 1989...but limited use only.)

Apart from cash, if you had something called a luncheon voucher, you could pay for some food if you were eating ina restaurant...

3.No internet in the early 1990's.. Internet came to Nigeria from around 1995/6 , and yes, you had to visit a cafe, and internet speeds were slow...as in SLOW. Maybe if you wanted fast speed, come at night, or in the morning.

Before internet, either if you were lucky you had handheld games like Nintendo game boy, or brick game to keep you busy, If that got boring.,..books, books books.

4.NTA came on at 4pm (except ON weekends, when it may come on earlier. So, if you were rich, you had VHS players, which means you kept busy watching videos. Maybe if you ran out of videos to watch, you borrowed from a friend, or you went to a video lending store and borrowed a video from their library.(like blockbuster...lol).

5.I guess most of the time you played outside, or just gisted. I doubt anyone would have had time to just stay indoors. Street would have been football pitches.

lomprico:
nepa was more reliable then
VHS video player dey
Nintendo games.

we would have coped well.

after all there was lockdown in 1918 those that survived did.

NEPA was just as bad as the DISCOS are now. The only reason why it may have seemed better was because most areas were not connected to the national grid.(part of the reason why we have power problems is that far too many areas got connected to the grid, especially in the 1980's and 90's...without concomitant increase in generation).

Delays in service were common. Transformer breaks? Can take weeks for the gents to fix the thing.

No lockdown in 1918...at least not like this one . That's why so many people died.(and the causative virus might have been very virulent, plus most of the world was still in the throes of WW One...bad food supply ...bad immunity)>

AgentNairaland:
Plan B Will Be Activated

OK. What would have been part of your plan B?