Don’t castigate but support govt to tackle COVID 19, PGF DG advises Nigerians, corporate bodies

The Director General, Progressive Governors Forum, Salihu Lukman has called on Nigerians to support government rather than castigating leaders for their actions or inactions in tackling the Coronavirus challenge in the country.

He as well tasked the government to change its social investment policiea by giving much attention to the health and education sectors.

Acknowledging that government is overwhelmed financially, he asked Nigerians in the private sector to borrow leaf from foreign countries by providing financial support to assist activities and programmes of government to curtail the pandemic.

The Director General in a statement in Abujaon Wednesday said the challenges of Covid-19 had present an opportunity to be united in marshalling effective responses to limit and eventually control number of citizens infected by the virus and lost to death.

Instead of initiating processes of developing the health sector such that it is able to mobilise leaders and citizens to work in harmony, Lukman said it is unfortunatel that Nigeria’s national life has made citizens to distrust all leaders at all levels with news platforms awash with negative commentaries and in some respect doomsday analysis and projections.

“With such reality, we may just be setting ourselves, as a nation, for a disaster. So long as our terms of engagement with our leaders is informed by a negative mindset, the outcome would most likely only be negative.

“Individuals would have different views about what being positive should mean, which could be blinded by our deep-seated anger against our leaders. Unfortunately, our leaders have also developed a corresponding mindset that almost equate every critical opinion as hostile.

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“As a result, we are witnessing expressions of joy when our leaders are infected by Covid-19 virus. And our leaders are also not open to public suggestions and recommendations.

It is virtually a case of establishing a negative equilibrium, which negate all possible engagements between our leaders and citizens on how best to respond to the policy challenge that Covid-19 posed to the nation.

“All these only exposes the sad reality that as a people we have lost our humanity. Once our humanity is lost, our capacity to respond to challenges such as the one posed by Covid-19 can only be weak.

“Our angry mode against each other will continue to take away the best of our human side. Issues of developing our healthcare services to be able to respond to the challenges are at best reduced to evaluating governmental actions or lack of it”, he said.

According to him, Covid-19 pandemic is confronting the country with the opportunity to revisit public policy thrust.

Lukman said there is need for collectively work to revive healthcare delivery services and educational institutions by consolidating public investment in both sectors.

He said, in Nigeria arguably, one of the big lessons Covid-19 is bringing is that the health and safety can only be guaranteed with good public investment in the health sector.

“It is true that our leaders have disappointed us over the years. It is also true that our leaders have, with hardly any exception, piloted the affairs of our country with submissive compliance to the philosophy that discourages public investment in health and educational sectors, at least since the mid 1980s.

“Most cases of public investments in these sectors prioritises constructions of hospitals and schools or classrooms. In very rare instances, the limited investments cover provisions of medical equipment. Investments in development of healthcare personnel, medicine, research, teachers, books, etc. are hardly considered.

Partly because these are the realities we faced, in many ways, our anger against our leaders are legitimate. But are we expressing our anger in a way that move us towards resolving our problems?

We need to wake up to the reality that our leaders, just like everyone of us need help with ideas, recommendations and above all volunteering our services and resources to strengthen our capacity to respond to Covid-19 challenge.

” So long as our disposition is that of condemning our leaders, the probability will be high that our leaders will be weak in testing new policy proposals coming from citizens including issues of policy shifts towards higher public investments to develop our health and educational services.

Often, we imagine that our leaders are different from us and to the extent of such conclusions proceed to imagine that abusing our leaders can satisfy our anger”, he submitted.

Canvassing Non-governmental initiatives to support governmental initiatives, he charged organised private sector, civil society, faith-based organisations, trade unions and all other voluntary associations to mobilise resources to support governments to tackle the threat of Covid-19.

“At this early stages of the manifestations of the threat of Covid-19 in Nigeria, we need to take urgent steps to recover our humanity if at all we want to focus ourselves to ensure that our responses help in producing the needed changes that could protect lives of citizens, guarantee quality and accessible healthcare services, etc.

“All these can only be achieved through high public investment in our health sector, which will also be partly dependent on similar high public investment in the education sector that will be required to produce the medical personnel.

“The issue is whether as Nigerians we want to unlock all the possible opportunities that the Covid-19 pandemic present or we want to remain stuck to the negative mindsets, which reduces us to behave with little considerations to what qualify us as human beings.

“The earlier we come to terms with this fact, the better for all of us. May God strengthen our resolve to tackle thCovid-19 pandemic!”, he said.