₦airaland Forum

freshkpomo:
The funny part is that these hoodlums will not have the balls to go face the politicians, they prefer to prey on innocent citizens.




God bless Nigeria.

Everything I predicted early February coming through. They called it the common flu. We called it the pandemic that lights the fuse of revolutions. President Buhari should count his teeth with his tongue. There are not enough policemen to hold the coming storm. Nigeria CANNOT be locked down. You cannot squeeze an elephant into your refridgerator no matter how hungry you are.

ignis:
Great tip

Ask for clinical trials first. Don't be a guinea pig for someone's quest for fame and fortune. That is the way things are done in 'saner climes'.

Just week 3 and folks are eating themselves up. What will happen by week 4, week 8 and week 48 when a vaccine eventually arrives.

Nigerians are busy fighting themselves instead of demanding from the people who asked for their votes to help organise them into a viable, prosperous and in this case healthy society.

When will the citizens of Nigeria wake up and ask this goverment what their strategy is to end this pandemic and reopen the country to save it from a far worse problem.

The way I am seeing things, very soon the people will have to take the wheel of this pandemic to survive. It is clear the government lacks the capacity to handle it alone.

If he had demanded from the government the right thing at the right time this will not happen. Does he think the government can feed all Nigerians for the months it will take to get a vaccine into circulation.... hmmm

adioolayi:
This idea of crisscrossing is why local transmission of CoVID19 is spreading. Why can't we stay in one place for God's sake People's businesses are folding up...hunger is increasing. No Government palliatives will get to an average common man. The ONLY thing we can do as citizens is to sacrifice for a while and STAY where we are. Let's endure this pain for a while and break this circle of transmission as fast as we can..so that we can go back to our businesses on time.


My friends... Government can only increase or extend this lockdown so far the CoVID19 is still being transmitted. Let's be responsible please.

STAT WHERE YOU ARE!!!

Can you see why I say Nigeria CANNOT be locked down.
Can you see why Nigeria will be one of the last to defeat Covid 19.
At the end it will be the formal sector that will suffer the most. Goverment will always find the money to spend, the informal sector will continue to break curfew.

Seun:
We've been told that it's difficult to do massive testing for the Coronavirus Disease in Nigeria. That we don't have the trained workers, technology, and money to do it like South Korea. This is why we've only conducted 5,000 tests in a country with a population of 195.9 million. This got me thinking about other African countries:

South Africa, with a population of 57.78 million, has conducted 80,085 tests.
Ghana, with a population of 29.77 million, has conducted 37,954 tests.
Egypt, with a population of 98.42 million, has conducted 25,000 tests.

Also, Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, is 9th in the list of African countries which have conducted the most tests. We are also 26th in the list of African countries that have conducted the most tests relative to the size of their population. Should we be conducting way more tests?

These are the things the citizens of Nigeria should be grilling their government about, the things the citizens of other nations bother their government about most because they know it will determine how long the pandemic and the consequent lockdown will last. But Nigerians in their usual miserly, ignorant, beggarly state of mind rather bicker about food, money and handouts.

They should know this: It is obvious Nigeria will be the last country to overcome this pandemic, probably the last country to come out of this on the face of the earth. The goverment will have long run out of resources to feed Nigerians by then, Nigerians will have long broken the curfew and will be dying in numbers. A complete mess is brewing.

When I say we donot have the capacity to handle this pandemic, I am not looking only at our GDP, finaces or reserves viz otner nations. The totality of capabilities includes intellectual, organisational and structural/institutional competencies. The data on testing is just one index amongst many that we are just incompetent as a country. Good luck to us.

WE SHOULD NEVER HAVE ALLOWED THIS VIRUS TAKE HOLD IN NIGERIA KNOWING ALL THESE. THERE ARE SOME POSITIONS THAT ARE JUST IRRECOVERABLE. WE SHOULD HAVE SHUT OUR BORDERS FAR, FAR, FAR EARLIER.

I don't care if this line is a headache to those who love the status quo and love playing the ostfich. But these fact should be warehoused for future incidents. A nation cannot rise above the quality of its citizens who are ultimately the shareholders of their destiny.

P.S. I wil not even start on the topic of restructuring the country and how we have kicked the can for long enough to suffer the consequences today. Everything from citizen databases, to the total absence of goverment at the grassroots, to the fights over boundaries of authority, the so called concurrent lists, etc, show us in clearterms that Nigeria as a nation is just too weak tohandle the challenges faced by the modern, progressive society.

When we eventually surmount this, I do hope we wil have our thinking elevated and our emotions grounded by the sufferings we are about to encounter in the weeks and months ahead.

Kekereekun123:
Even with the belief of God she still died. Jesus cannot save when needed

God is not an ATM you press at will and get immediate value. Even an ATM requires a bank account meaning a relationship with the bank. What you eventually get out of it cannot be more than you put into it irrespective of your situation.

The facts around God have been widely misrepresented over the generations within and outside the church. God is a personality too with an expectation of relationship just as we do and we act on. He is not a machine open to manipulation by anyone.

No problem. Let us see what you will say by the end of April when you will be seeking an extension till the end of May in the face of an imminent national implosion. Don't begin to think of an alternative strategy to handle this pandemic.

Perhaps we should just lease the area to Chad until the whole thing is over if we cannot hold it.

pfadom:
Imagine what could have happened without lockdown.

Lockdown was only meant to minimise transmission from infected person to other persons. With lockdown transmission can be limited to the affected household.

The ONLY purpose of the lockdown overseas is to slow the rate of NEW infections so that the healthcare system is not overwhelmed. It is a time buying strategy, that's all.

What you then do with the time you gain will determine just how much an individual country will suffer. We have so called locked down for 2 weeks and in that time tested a total of no more than 5, 6000.

That to me is a total waste of GDP for paltry returns. It will ultimately mean we will be in this pandemic regime for months to come, long after most other countries have recovered.

Once again our lethargic goverment is in the spot. What is their strategy to beat this virus and restart the economy. Siddon look is not a strategy. The longer we stay so called lockdown the less likely will compliance be guaranteed and the vicious cycle of pandemic and economics will guarantee the bleeding of the Nigerian state akin to the insurgency in the north east.

Told you guys so. We just DONOT have the capacity to lockdown Nigeria. We certainly donot have the capacity to test, too poor (60 percent living on less than a dollar at the best of times) to self isolate for any reasonable time frame and finally goverment doesn't have the administrative structures to either palliate responsibly or secure the country against anti-social activity.

In a nutshell we are in serious problem. I cannot see how Nigeria will beat this pandemic before a vaccine comes out next year.

Once again. Like I first said in early February. It is not about the 'common flu' but about capacity, about the economics of a pandemic. Nigeria simply CANNOT be locked down because we lack the capacity to. Compliance yesterday was worse than a week ago and folks in the sattelite towns of Abuja are already in serious breach.

With folks running around the virus cannot be contained....and as such the number of new infections will not come down and the lockdown will continue without end if alternative strategies are not formulated quickly.

We are in a vicious cycle in Nigeria.

What is the overriding strategy of this goverment in tackling this pandemic. It had a beginning when the Italian entered Nigeria undetected almost two months ago. Now what is the exit strategy.

Why are Nigerians not asking serious questions of their goverment. Why are Nigerians so docile.

Dr. Fauci of the United States says it is the virus that runs the show. Apparently this holds true only in countries such as Nigeria beset by reactionary leadership that waits for problems to become crises before waking up.

Now the only date or time frame I can see Nigeria getting over this pandemic and reopening for business is when a viable vaccine is ready in a year's time. That means the lockdown is most likely going to be extended sequentially till March 2021. If anyone in goverment feels otherwise let them say how this will be.

Let them say how testing a paltry 5,000 citizens a month will not lead to years of uncertainty especially when the numbers of new cases continue to rise.

Citizens of other countries beseech their goverments with complaints of inadequate testing numbers. Our citizens are preoccupied only with the economics viz the so called palliatives not knowing that testing determines the metrics of the lockdown and the lockdown will determine the economic outlook of every Nigerian going forward.

Nigerians should realise that they donot have a goverment of practical intellectuals and deep, strategic thinkers. They let the virus into the country without an understanding of the true state of their capabilities.

A goverment that is at sea has to be spoon fed, pushed in a pram and read bedtime stories by the citizens to survive. If Nigerians donot demand for a proper plan on how we are going to end the pandemic and close down Covid 19, Nigeria chapter then God forbid it becomes as entrenched as the Boko Haram insurgency and a cash cow for the vile hearued in goverment.

That is the state of leadership in Nigeria. They know very little about anything. The real question will be. Will this pandemic elevate the thinking of Nigerians.... will it open their eyes to the paucity of governance and the complete failure of the model we practice.... but like most things I bet Nigeria(ns) will learn nothing after this crises is over and the status quo will be maintained.

After this crises the healthcare system WILL CERTAINLY BE LEFT TO ROT AGAIN. It is almost a given.

Blisplendor12:
You're prepared for the Corona virus, guess you've made up your mind that it will reside and become a normal sickness in your country.

Believe me it will. Its an influenza virus. Very hardy. It will never go away once it is establiahed. The end game of this pandemic is to suppress it with vaccines. I don't know of any virus that has been eliminated completely worldwide.

Anyway, building a hospital is a good thing. It will serve into the future to accomodate future pandemics, wars and other widespread. No investment in health care is ever wasted. Medicine is a fundamentally prosperous profession.

Philinho:
And the. increased Doctors salaries by additional $1000 . A country that is functional

Here doctors are battling the police and others at checkpoints to get to and from work.

udemzyudex:
And what makes you think some people in this government won't use proxy to acquire it too?

They will definitely acquire them and it will most likely die in their hands which is an equally good outcome. What is your love life about with 60's and 70's outdated equipment. Why are Nigerians so caught up in these refineries that we simply cannot look beyond them. They have failed for the past 25 years. Are we into 'Auction Kings' or 'Celebrity Makeovers'. I just want them sold so that the excuses can end once and for all. Not that I believe they can ever come back in any meaningful way.

The only assets of value about the refineries is probably the land on which they sit. Folks who are into industrial plants and machinery know those refineries will never turn a profit in their present state. Ever. Just glad that once this is over government will have no more claim to the downstream sector. It should get out and stay out. It has been a 40 year disaster.

After wasting five solid years in the wilderness they are back to where we said they should be heading.
Words fail me to describe what a hopeless bunch these folks are.

Sanusi said it in the dying days of the Jonathan administration, El-Rufai has said it countless times.... Atiku campaigned with that theme. Nigerians refused all that and made their beds with propaganda. Now this.

You can imagine how far we will have gone if we had unbundled the NNPC long ago and emptied the tares into the fire pit. Yes, it is a Nigerian thing indeed to learn by suffering. That is proven once again. Restructuring by Covid 19. Thanks to the pandemic for putting the owners of Nigeria and the lovers of the status quo on ice.

Of course he was being metaphoric when he said those things in 2015 but like I have being saying lately situational awareness together with deep thought is good leadership.

Just like the corona pandemic as it affects Nigeria, good leadership will have anticipated the inability of the people to be locked down and have closed down the international borders instead.

Our leaders have shown us over again that they are are not often thoughtful about their pronouncements and actions. They come across as being more emotional and sentimantal which is the exclusive preserve of the led.

When the WHO said TEST! TEST! TEST! for us in Nigeria this meant more than Covid 19.

Everything in Nigeria is being tested....from the Constitution, governance, civil society, the economy and right down to the nerve and moral fibre of the average Nigerian. Everyone is under incredible pressure. I just fear for this country.

I believe Wike has no right to march into a Federal Goverment facility to arrest anyone if that is what he did. His border with the airport which is a facility guarded by the exclusive list lies at the gates.

That is where he should mount his checks and enforce his laws. He should simply prevent them from driving on the streets of Portharcourt. They can conduct their 'Federal business' at the airport and fly back.

Seun:
With this attitude, he could be the next Boris Johnson. But I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

Boris contacted Covid before the lockdown when he went around hospitals shaking and embracing the sick openly and laughing off the consequences. That was foolish.

But what this man is saying is right and I will add this. Making masks mandatory may give a false sense of security and lead to carelessness in other critical sanitary practices.

However it maybe the only route out of lockdown.

ValCon888:
I mean no disrespect, but the Nigerian military do not know how to fight insurgency warfare. 
Insurgency warfare is 50% actual combat and 50% propaganda warfare. You have to win the propaganda war to win the actual war. 

Win the support of the local population and deny it to your enemy. Without local support Boko Haram will weaken and die. 

Another mistake the army makes is to patrol the terrain in convoys. That gives you the false impression you're in control while giving the enemy lots of space to attack you. 

Nigerian army mostly repel the enemy you hardly see them attack. You have to continuously bring the war to the enemy. Boko haram are human beings. They eat, shìt, and sleep. Find out where they do these things and exterminate them like cockroaches. If that means waterboarding some of the captives then by all means do so. 

This is a war of attrition and not church thanksgiving.

The latter is easier said than done. America did more attrition in Vietnam late sixties than in the whole Second World war, and again in Fallujah late in the Bush presidency but it had limited success against guerillas especially the fundamentalist variety.

Guerillas mean they can be farmers, shop owners, vulcanizers, school teachers, and hopefully not vigilante by day and when it is time for 'service' they secretly congregate then go out for mass 'evangelism' to 'harvest the souls of tje unbelievers' to their course.

And like most quasi-religious movements they procreate on the primordial instincts of fear and greed. Those not in the movement will be made to join either out of self preservation or the riches that come with the plunder of resources.

For a goverment to successfully seperate the wheat from the chaff it will have to deploy the kind of intellectualism the military alone is not equiped with. To burn the wheat with the chaff is just a receipe for social famine, a vicious cycle of avarice that has bogged down countless armies in unwinnable wars.

There is no military solution to this problem. Like viruses we will just have to live with it while applying the vaccine of a counter ideology. And hope you know how vaccines and serums are made. You take death to make life.

The key to stopping Boko Haram lies in or with Boko Haram.

NB: Sorry to make this public. But this is how it is done. You float another movement similar in apearance to Boko Haram to infiltrate the real Boko Haram amd corrode it from within while actively undemining their roots by a counter ideology on the ground where they resource.

Nigerians should know this. No sensible country has lifted restrictions when infection rates are on the rise. The moment we attempt to do so the international community will come down on us and will shut us out.

Presently we are not testing enough to know how much damage this virus is doing to our health as a nation. So in order to square the economy with the circle of corona at some point we may have to start hiding new infections and faking records like China to appear to be winning.

I have been around a number of primary healhcare institutions and spoken with a number of doctors and the overwhelming fact is that the virus has not reached the grassroots. They are not seeing cases relating with the symptoms in their consultancies yet.

So I advice goverment to take this fight underground and restrategise around public health, public awareness and public safety just like Austria is doing and just like the UK plans to do. This lockdown is not working. We must learn to work our way around this virus and plan to live with it.

But to cripple the 'country' in an imperfect way while waiting for cases to regress to zero in my opinion is not possible in Nigeria and not realistic with an influenza virus. The thing just doesn't die off.

Viruses are not killed, they are only subdued. Measles, HIV, ebola, zika, chicken and small pox, are all still out there. Worse viruses than the corona family of viruses. People just have to find ways to live with them, manage them.

So. Can you see why I said Nigeria cannot be locked down. When we talk about capacity to do things this is the clear indicator. Same thing in Abuja. The outskirts are not locked down. Why.

Because Nigeria(ns) donot have the financial, intellectual and moral capacity to organize themselves around values and set objectives including in this case self quarantine regimes.

This is what a cerebral goverment knows and rather than allow things to spiral out of control should have shut the international borders or quarantined those coming in from all countries compulsorily.

Is it not easier to quarantine those who understand it, those who have a bigger stake in obeying it and those who can afford it. Looking back was it not easier to quarantine 5,000 returnees than lockdown 200 million people. Would it not have been cheaper for goverment to feed 5,000 for two weeks than palliate its so called 11 million vulnerable.

This is what is called strategic thinking which this goverment lacks. Now that Nigerians wont be locked down, the virus CANNOT be contained and either the goverment continues its half measures in perpetuity or gives in and ignores the death toll.

Unfortunately if it does the latter Nigeria will become an international pariah with grave consequences especially when other nations recover and we are left as the black sheep. Visas, invesrment, tourism, sports.... we will be banned from EVERYTHING if we cannot halt the virus and we cannot halt the virus if we cannot lock down.

So you can see why we were shouting as far back as Febuary. Lock, Lock, Lock the GATE of Nigeria so that we donot have to lock the ROOMS....

My security men lock my gates permanently at 11pm every night. But how can I emotionally stand locking my room because of the fear of covid against my household and loved ones. So I make sure covid doesn't enter my gate. Common sense.

Had to drive out of Abuja this morning to Nassarawa. Just getting there despite official permits. Road blocks every kilometer and bogged down by motorists.

Nigerians are too stubborn to obey the lockdown and the law enforcement officials are not helping those on essential services pass through by creating a proper screen.

Siberia01:
big lie

non of them has achieved what the legend has done
from offroads to great deserts... don't ever ever compare again... how many rallies have those Japanese toys undergone

The Toyota Corolla has done that albeit with a smaller engine.

flejnr:
That was like having an s550 Mercedes in the 70’s , could remember down to 1999 some governors had it as their official car.

It was not. Peugeot has never been anywhere near the prestige nor the expense of Mercedes Benz. Mercedes is and has always been known as a premium, luxury brand while the Peugeot is in the same class as the Toyota brand.

My dad had both as official cars in the late 70's, in goverment and in the private sector. And by the way Mercedes Benz was driven by goverment officials long before Obasanjo came to power. Ostentation in goverment started as soon as the British lowered the Union Jack.

Splashme:

So, why is NNPC still fixing prices?
Why not allow marketers sell at market prices ?

The mere fact that NNPC is still fixing prices to allow for uniformity nationwide
means there will definitely be subsidy


$

Indeed. Deregulation and liberalisation go hand in hand. It is either all or none. That is the difference between the success story of telecommunications and the failure so far of the power sector.

No one told them what to charge for their services and where they decide to deploy. When goverment begins to fly the kite of so called 'security' meaning they are prepared to distort the market then nothing can be achieved.

They can decide to mess up the Dangote refinery for instance overnight.

Treasure28:
What's the name?

Covid 1999.... aka see you on the other side of life.

akinegba1:
Port Harcourt township was planned by the British. It is still the best planned area in Nigeria, even better planned than Abuja

It is not better planned than Abuja please, haba.

ddippset:
APC?

Why only APC? What about PDP?


See the problem?

Politics with everything.

Was Aso Rock Clinic built in 2015?


PDP were budgeting monies annually for the same clinic for 16 years.

Just two quick questions for you.

By your assertion have you or have you not admitted that this present goverment is not more accountable nor more prudent than the one it replaced in 2015.

By your assertion are you not opening the door for continuous and endless blame of this regime and its attendant distractions to the next regime after 2023. Will they not use this regime as an excuse for future failure.

If you took your car to the mechanic and asked for a repair and on arriving home discovered the same problems despite spending nearly half a trillion naira on INEC conducted elections, what will you do?

A. Manage the car like that.
B. Blame yourself for plunging into that pothole.
C. Rush back to the phoney mechanic in a blind rage and demand your money back.

Folks, if you can treat your destiny as a Nigerian the way you treat your personal property and personal comfort this country will be better.

It is poor quality citizenship that cannot correlate ones idea of what quality governance should be with his present status and future prospects. Everyone suffers from bad governance one way or the other mister.