Of Gainers, Losers, and Victims: COVID-19 and Securitized Lockdown in Nigeria in Early 2020

Sudan Journal of Medical Sciences

Lockdown is a strategy employed worldwide to limit spread of COVID 19. Social and economic activities were markedly affected in Nigeria and other parts of the world. Social vices were also on the rise during the period. Social unrest may arise if there are no adequate palliative measures to address the worsening hunger amidst the citizenry. Moderation and appropriate control of the strategy are suggested as “total lockdown” is not feasible in Nigeria.

Urban, Planning and Transport Research, 2021

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has generally induced mass panic and threat across the world, including Nigeria, due to the perceived uncertainties, fears and insecurities in the communities. Based on this backdrop, this study examined COVID-19 pandemic and insecurity in Nigeria. Convenience accidental sampling was used to administer 1671 copies of a questionnaire on residents through an online/electronic survey. Data collected were analysed descriptively and inferentially. Findings revealed that the spike in crime during the COVID-19 lockdown period is relatively higher than usual with disruption of public peace, theft and rape accounting for the most prominent crime. Meanwhile, most respondents experienced crime incidence between 6 pm and 12 midnight. Ironically, idleness, poor spatial arrangement/planning, poor governance and poverty were the major catalysts for the crime spike during the lockdown, while fear-of-fear (phobophobia) and declined socio-economic capacity were predominant effects of crime experienced. The Fisher’s exact test results revealed a significant relationship between the surge in crime and COVID-19-restrictive measures. The study concludes that the insecurities during lockdown periods have caused both temporary and permanent physical and psychological havoc; hence, it recommends quick advancement of the built environment with smart security measures and social supports for the citizenry during the pandemic.

The threats of Covid-19 in Nigeria, and globally, have generated a series of policy responses, including lockdown. Although lockdown was adopted as a proactive policy measure to contain rapid and widespread of Covid-19 and associated fatalities, its enforcement became a subject of public debate, with the human rights records of the security agencies. This chapter examines the threats of Covid-19 that necessitated lockdown in Nigeria, with the human rights concerns against the security agencies during this period and their potential implications. It shows how the pre-exiting conditions of the population (like the level of poverty, literacy, inequality, and confidence in state institutions, science and supernatural powers); inadequacies of non-security responses of the state (like awareness programmes and distribution of palliative for the poor); as well as organisational and strategic challenges of the security agencies (like patterns of recruitment, training, command, operation, and human rights record) affected the moral appeal for compliance, deterrence, and enforcement of the lockdown in Nigeria. Accordingly, there is an overriding need to review and improve organisational capacities and strategies of various security agencies, as well as the security policy coordination by the executive and legislative oversight, and adjudicate cases to serve justice to victims of human rights abuses, in Nigeria.

The Politics of Covid-19 Pandemic and Human Security threat in Port Harcourt City, Nigeria, 2021

The study examined the politics of the Covid-19 Pandemic and human security threat in Port Harcourt City, Nigeria. Politics as social activity involve how matters are resolved through the collective decision. The ability to contain the spread of the Covid-19 brought spotlights on leadership capacity, the awkwardness of state actors, global ideological differences, and policy priorities of various international, regional and national governments. Globally, Covid-19 led to an adverse impact on human security, such as the closure of schools, jobs, restriction of movement, among others. In Port Harcourt city, the enforcement and fight against the pandemic were pursued with aggressiveness by the Rivers State government. The lockdown enforcement led to constitutional conflict between the federal government and Rivers state governments. To achieve this aim, the study adopted the triangulation method of data gathering techniques. A total of 250 structured questionnaires were randomly administered among the respondents in Port Harcourt City, out of which 230 were retrieved and used for analysis. The paper adopted fear appeal theory as its theoretical construct. The study unraveled that the lockdown policy adversely impacted human security. The study recommends amongst others that the Rivers State government and Nigeria at large should improve on food security.

African Review of Economics and Finance, 2021

Behavioural economics has provided much source of inspiration for public policy in the COVID-19 era. Such is evidently the state of discussion in Ghana, where Ghanaians' so-called stubborn resistance to positive behavioural change is increasingly the target of public and popular criticisms. This paper argues that further to legitimising the police violence and extrajudicial sanctions meted out to 'undisciplined' violators of the restrictions, the indiscipline narrative leaps too quickly from an account of the personal morality/attitudes of Ghanaians to the collective action of mass-defiance of the restrictions without taking adequate account of the range of structural constraints that made it difficult for the majority of the people to comply with the restrictions. The mass defiance of the restrictions is best understood in the context of the unequal outcomes of the broader policy processes and practices, and the historical-institutional power dynamics around them that put some people in criminogenic situations in the country. It is important that media and policy analyses of public defiance of the restrictions and social problems in the country generally move beyond the simplistic notion of indiscipline to dissect how deliberate bias against the needs of the majority operates, and is institutionalised in policy and practice in ways that undermine their commitment to rules and regulations.

Arabian Journal of Business and Management Review, 2021

The paper examines the proliferations of insecurity in Nigeria amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. It also study the dimensions of the various security challenges and the pattern of variance from what is obtainable prior to the menace of SARS-19. The perplexing question is that the issue of Boko haram, banditry, kidnaping, rape, and other social problems are more evident during this pandemic to the extent that the relative peace that is been enjoyed prior to the novel coronavirus is now absence in majority of villages and towns in Nigeria. The Nigeria security outfits has not been able to find lasting solutions to this problems rather it getting worse, quick and lasting solutions is needed to avert and revert the country into normal state of peace if not the Nigeria state will turn into quagmire before the end of the COVID-19 novel virus. This paper made use of available secondary materials of events and cases. The paper suggests the need to re-orientate the government, security personnel...

2022

While many of the persisting social problems in Ghana and Africa broadly tend to be visible expressions of ‘indiscipline’ and ‘lawlessness’, their roots are often found in inequalities. Viewed this way, the current go-to public policy of deploying the violent power of the state to contain the problem, as the lived experience shows, could only yield little meaningful, sustainable benefits. More could be achieved by investing in measures that give the majority a chance to have a shot at decent life or address the conditions undermining their chances to have a shot at a decent life. This paper illustrates this argument with the mass-violation of Ghana’s March 2020 COVID-19 lockdown restrictions.

As a result of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In late February 2020, the Nigerian government took various measures to combat the plague. In Nigeria the lockdown was started in Lagos, Ogun State and Abuja the capital territory (1, 2). Some other states across the country have adopted various restrictive measures. However other states of North West, North Central and North East follow suit to contain the spread of COVID-19 in their state meanwhile this bring about bridge of security in those states. The main purpose of lockdown was to contain the spread of novel COVID-19 (3). However this resulted to an increase in banditry and Boko-haram attack in northern part of Nigeria.

Academia Mental Health and Well-Being, 2024

Objectives: This study examines attitudes consisting of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours (T-F-B) chains experienced in imagination by physicians before and during seeking treatment as a patient, and before and during treating another physician as a patient. Methods: Ninety-six physicians, from three countries, completed a questionnaire about their imagined attitudes in four situations: "before and during your visit to a physician as a patient" and "before and during a visit to you, as a physician, by another physician in the capacity of a patient". These questionnaires were retrolectively qualitatively analysed. Results: All four situations evoked negative and/or stressful reaction chains of T-F-B. Some of these chains were related to the situation in which two physicians meet, such as shame in asking for medical care from another physician and fear of failing as a consulting physician. Conclusion: There are specific barriers to physicians seeking treatment from and providing treatment to other physicians, especially shame on both sides. Aspiring physicians can learn what it means to ask for medical treatment as a physician, it can make them less anxious or insecure, and they can develop more compassion for their patients. The physician-to-physician healthcare barriers - a phenomenological qualitative study

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