Don faults African leaders’ approach to COVID-19 fight
A university lecturer has said that it is unfortunate that leaders of several countries in Africa ought to have seen the coronavirus coming, following the havoc already caused in other continents but failed to adopt proactive measures to prevent the pandemic from penetrating Africa.
He said: “Nigeria, for instance, took the pandemic for granted. It delayed by omission or commission to shut down its borders and also enforce stricter checks in air and sea ports and other entrants. Our handlers went to sleep.”
The Associate Professor of History in the Department of History and International Studies, Kogi state University, Patrick Ukase in his paper titled: “COVID-19: Matters arising in Nigeria,” pointed out that even after it identified its first index case, the country still carried on as if it had a magic wand to confront the pandemic.
According to the university don, now that the pandemic is in Nigeria, it has further exposed the weaknesses and gaps, not just in the health institutions, but in the entire national life, saying that Nigeria’s health system collapsed in the early 1980s, thereby setting the stage for health tourism.
He posited that those who had stolen state funds embarked on medical treatment and check-up in advanced countries to benefit from a health care system which advanced nations had invested heavily in, and working tirelessly to fix for their citizens.
COVID-19: Umahi wants more doctors, health workers at treatment centres
Ukase noted with sadness that since 1980s, virtually all the military and civilian presidents, governors, ministers, legislators and many other public office holders and members of their families were receiving medical treatment abroad with late President Yar’ Adua raising the bar of Nigerian leaders who sought medical treatment abroad, while President Muhammadu Buhari took it to the next level.
The university lecturer therefore, chided the federal and state governments for desperately trying to establish isolation centres, pointing out that the existing facilities both at the teaching hospitals which would have served this purpose are in pitiable state.
He said the pandemic has thrown a bigger challenge to the nation’s handlers to recalibrate its primitive health care sector.
