A CRITICAL LOOK AT COVID-19 IMPOSED CURFEW AND INTERSTATE MOVEMENT RESTRICTION - DE-REPORTORIAL

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Wednesday, June 3, 2020

A CRITICAL LOOK AT COVID-19 IMPOSED CURFEW AND INTERSTATE MOVEMENT RESTRICTION

For quite some time, I have been pondering over the curfew imposed on the entire nation as a way of curbing the spread of the virus.
The questions that agitate my mind are these: How effective is the curfew?
Do we really need a curfew in the specified hours?

How effective is the interstate restriction of movement?

The answer to the first question is that the curfew is not effective. And to the second question, my view is that curfew in the specified hours does not make sense.
 Imposing curfew at night simply begs the question. Nigerians are not nocturnal. As such, that period is a time when everybody is in bed! Worse still is the logic behind that. An hour of freedom to go out and mix freely with people is all that it takes for the virus to keep on spreading.
If there is going to be restrictions at all, it should be during the day time.
The areas that government needs to emphasize are social distancing, limiting and restricting movements, whether at day or at night to essential needs and creating more awareness on the damage the virus can do to the vulnerable members of the entire populace who are the elderly people and the sick.
For instance, at family level, children who have parents that are diabetic, hypertensive etc. should be more cautious about where they go. This is because, if they contact the virus, while they may have a high degree of immunity to survive, their parents can easily contact it from them.
So it is not enough to restrict the elderly ones from going out. Every person that goes out should take precaution on where he goes and what he does so that he doesn't bring back the virus to the innocent members of the family.
The other needless restriction is the interstate movement. How is this considered needless?
First, is that there are no clear cut boundaries between states. Take for instance the case of Lagos and Ogun. Who can tell me how effective the movement restriction across length and breadth of the two states is? Even in the interior states, people easily trek across from their village to the next village which is in another state.
That apart, assuming that those loopholes are not there, the exception granted to a class of the citizens is enough to render the restriction useless. Worse still is the way those who are on exemption list abuse the privilege e.g. smuggling of people inside vehicles carrying foodstuff back and forth states.
Finally and the worst of them all is the way the law enforcement agency is handling the restrictions. Many innocent members of the citizens are being punished on a daily basis, the police, the Army and the FRSC are feeding fat through fines and bribes. Commercial vehicles go on a daily basis across states buying their ways, all at the expense of commuters.
My submission is that the restrictions should be relaxed and instead, there should be more efforts in the areas of creating awareness on the precautions that the people need to take to avoid contacting the virus.

Professor Oladiipo Ajiboye writes from  University of Lagos...

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