COVID-19 and reopened worship centres

AFTER more than 13 weeks of a desperate and panicky battle against coronavirus disease, a battle everyone hoped would last for two or three months, the federal and state governments are gradually reconciling themselves to the idea of a long struggle. The feistiness of the past few weeks is giving way to sombreness, quick fixes to percolative panaceas, and high expectations to moderate and reasonable optimism. From shutting or locking down nearly the entire economy and stilling the country’s boisterous social and political environments, the governments have cautiously begun to reopen the country. In fact, they have started to reflect on the measures they had designed and implemented in the past few weeks, wondering whether they were not an infliction of needless punishment, and whether the health scare that metamorphosed into a general societal crisis could not have been handled differently.

Only a few hardy states still administer lockdown. For the rest of the country, in place of that melodramatic and asphyxiating measure, they are reposing nearly all their hopes on ensuring rigid adherence to more realistic protocols which they believe would serve the same purpose of defeating the pandemic without paralysing the economy and destroying livelihoods. Consequently, the airline industry, which had all but collapsed, is being resuscitated and restored to its primacy. Hotels, social events and entertainment centres are to reopen soon. Interstate lockdown and schools are being re-examined in preparation for reopening. And worship centres, the long-awaited special religious sector, are being opened, with some states deferring the reopening by a week or two. The pandemic is real, but in the face of economic woes, the country, like other countries, is opting for moderation, juxtaposition and balancing.

At first, the federal government appropriated the war against the disease and left little in terms of depth or flexibility to the states, including Lagos State, which first faced the task squarely and hoped to battle the disease to submission as it did the Ebola disease. Now after 13 weeks of breathless undertaking, the federal government has ceded the unending war to the states. When it championed the war, it never really addressed the crisis as comprehensively and adroitly as it should. It is gratifying realism that the feds have fobbed off the war to the states, where it really should have been domiciled from the beginning, with the feds originally expected to smooth out and unify areas of the battle that conflict.

Reason has finally prevailed. Now, the federal government sets broad policies and frameworks for the states to follow in such a manner that allows for state peculiarities. Last week, as part of the federal government’s reopening exercise, the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 pandemic stipulated protocols for the reopening of worship centres. Broadly, it ordered, in addition to the usual general protocols, services or prayers should not exceed certain hours, and children should not be allowed into worship centres because of their lack of maturity in understanding and abiding with health protocols. It is not clear how feasible it is for parents to leave their children at home during worship. Or perhaps the government is simply saying that parents have a choice to make in the matter.

But whether obeying the directive on limited hours of worship or keeping the children at home, some of these measures are going to be difficult to sustain in the weeks ahead. The fear of the disease will constrain parents for a little while, but later, when it is clear that the disease has not been or cannot be eradicated in one fell swoop, vaccine or no vaccine, something will have to give. There is in fact little to show that the populace strictly observes the protocols of lockdown relaxation in other areas of national life. Markets, because of their unsophisticated nature and architecture in Nigeria, remain as rowdy as ever, the roads are busy and face masks a terrible nuisance to many who have breathing issues, and interactions remain difficult and sometimes uncontrollable in areas where demand for social services outstrip supply. The federal and state governments of course mean well when they insist on strict adherence to protocols, and are unimpeachable when they caution that the country must not relapse into complacency in the fight against a disease that is proving relentless and intractable.

And while the government, which hastily began lockdown in the mistaken belief that such a measure was the needed magic bullet for the disease, is reopening the country even in the face of rising infection, it is a tragedy that states like Kogi have thoughtlessly embraced the measure thereby paralysing parts of their state and making the people vulnerable to hunger, disease, and other forms of privations such as robberies and herdsmen attacks. Kogi for instance has not learnt anything from the experiences of other states, preferring to wallow in ignorance. Reopening is the right way to go. But the federal and state governments have been very lax in monitoring adherence to the rules and regulations of the lockdown relaxation, as they have been ineffective in policing the ban on interstate movement. That laxity must be avoided at all costs as the phased reopening begins in earnest.

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