Lockdown: Persevere Much More, Lagos Assembly Appeals To Lagosians

…Says Sit At Home Will Curb Spread Of COVID-19

The Lagos State House of Assembly has pleaded with Lagosians to bear a little more the hardship trailing the COVID-19 Pandemic, stating that it is necessary to strictly adhere to restriction order imposed by the government so as to stem the spread of the virus in no distant time.

A Joint committee of the House on Health and Information, which made a visit to four topical Coronavirus treatment and Isolation centres, in the state for a sight seeing of the facilities and to ascertain how adequate the health care services are, noted that all over the globe the economy is nose diving and that people now needed more than ever before to be their brother’s keeper by extending a helping hand to the vulnerables.

The committee visited Mainland Infectious Disease Hospital (IDH), Yaba, Isolation Centre at Onikan Mobolaji Johnson Arena, Eti Osa Isolation Centre at Landmark Victoria Island and the Cardiac and Renal Centre General Hospital Gbagada, which has also been drafted for prompt medical care as the virus bites harder in the State given the circulated statistics by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).

In their observation during the tour around the facilities, the committee noticed a proactive response to the pandemic as basic equipments were being provided.

Aside slight inadequacies sighted at the IDH with respect to provision of Personal Protective Equipments (PPE) for frontline healthcare givers; the nurses and hygienists as well as testing kits, which they promise to make recommendations for needed attention.

According the team led by Chairman of the House Committee on Health Services, Hon. Hakeem Sokunle, and accompanied by the Chairman of the House Committee on Information, Security and Strategy, the government is leaving no stone unturned to mitigate the further spread of the virus but they needed the cooperation of the people.

Also part on the team were Hon. Temitope Adewale Chairman House Committee on Transportation and Hon. Desmond Elliott, Chairman House Committee on the Environment.

Sokunle harped on the aptness of the government’s insistence on sit at home order as the best way to curb the spread of the virus to prevent the grave consequences of getting infected by individuals.

The lawmaker commended the Lagos State Governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu for the lockdown, noting that if strictly adhered to, it will aid a quick detection and immedimmediateate medical attention.

“Let us commend the government for given out that executive order. I must say this, having it slow does not mean that we will achieve 100 percent success and having it fast has nothing to do with success.

“The good thing about the place is that if there is a lockdown, it will confine everybody to his or her room or places of abode and that would enable us if there is any outbreak to come down and pick up the patient for treatment.

“So, the lockdown will only assist us to identify all the people affected by Coronavirus.

“The best way to curb the spread of the virus is absolute lockdown. I understand it is not easy, but sometimes we should be able to consider the effect of COVID-19 because if you witness the effect of the virus on human being it is very bad.

“You can imagine shortened breathing, coughing and all the rest, it will get to a time that the respiratory organ will be oozing blood.

“So if the government said we should lockdown, we should be able to abide by it and lockdown,” Sokunle stated.

Speaking on the barrage of complaints that trailed the palliatives distribution around the state, Honourable Tunde Braimoh appealed to Lagosians to persevere a lot more, saying that the situation demanded drastic actions as it was a sudden one for which preparation was not made earlier.

The lawmaker noted the disruptive manner by which the pandemic took on the world, citing the fact that the people needed to be encouraged by the efforts of well meaning Nigerians, who went out of their way to bring succour to vulnerable persons at this time of despair and fear.

“The House of Assembly has observed, being the closest to the people that more than average of the complaints received across the state bothers on palliatives and that was why a committee was set up by the Rt. Honourable Speaker, Rt. Hon. (Dr.) Mudashiru Obasa to meet with the State Governor His Excellency, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, led by the Deputy Speaker in company of eight other members who had a very useful meeting with the governor and were able to put this to the fore.

“There were so much complaints about the adequacy or even availability of the palliatives. The complaints vary, in some places it was not adequate, in some others they are yet to get anything at all and the Governor actually assured the Assembly that nobody expected this problem and we should give kudos to the government for responding.

“Most of the places where responses are faster and more adequate is because they have the data already that they’ve been using to do social support or social intervention to their people all along.

“We don’t have any verifiable data base here and so you have to be sure that not just some people are getting many while some of them get none.

“So the Governor is concerned and he has said that going by the reports received from us and other sources he is working on a verifiable data base to make palliatives available to people in no distant future.

“It could be today or tommorow one can’t tell, but it will be as soon as possible.

“I want to say that contrary to the erroneous or mischievous belief of some people that members of the Assembly have been given palliatives to share to them, that is not so.

“None of us has collected a kobo, we won’t even collect it, we won’t even be given anyway because it is not our own duty. We don’t touch money, our own duty is to appropriate money to the executive arm of government, we don’t go to the arena or field and do that ourselves.

“When your people are in distress they don’t understand your check and balance on abuse of power.

“So you have to come out as somebody who was given the mandate, love and aspirations of the people and their confidence, you must justify those things at all times.

“That is why each and every member, like Mr Speaker gives daily breakfast to people, 30,000 loaves of bread and more daily, other members, myself inclusive, have also done a lot of cash transfers as well giving out bags of rice, garri, beans and lots more to our constituents to alleviate the hardship posed by the lockdown to halt the spread of COVID-19.

“I want to appeal to our people to be patient. We understand quite clearly the import of times are very telling on our people, we know that our people who work and earn their living on a daily basis when they don’t work in a day it is difficult for them to adequately fend for themselves.

“Nigerian system is largely informal, maybe about ten percent of the population is employed by the government and maybe another 20 percent by the private sector, the rest are earning their living through small or medium scale enterprises most of which are owned by sole proprietors, like motorbike operators, plumbers, hairdressers and many people who are into petty trading are having it rough and we understand that.

“We want to beg our people to know that is one problem on one side which bothers on welfare. The other problem on the other side is COVID-19, which has to do with survivorship, about life and death, if somebody is alive that is when he can think about welfare, once you are dead you care less and death is a supreme sacrifice, we want to appeal to our people not to die.

“There is still hope for Nigeria, we want to appeal to them to bear with us and be introspective in our reactions to the dictates of this time.

“Of course it is frustrating, annoying and it makes one angry because of hunger that is natural, but we want our people to bear it mind that there is still light at the end of the tunnel and there is still hope,” Braimoh said.

Earlier, Dr. Nifemi Oloniniyo the Medical Officer at the IDH, who held forte for the Managing Director, Dr. Abimbola Bowale while conducting the committee round the facility noted that it has 103 bed spaces for patients along with two Isolation centres around it.

Dr. James Okediran, who was also on ground at the IDH called for more equipment because the numbers are increasing by the day.

The Permanent Secretary of the state Ministry of Health, Dr. Olusegun Ogboye called the attention of Lagosians to the need for them not to be secretive, when having related symptoms as early detection and proper treatment will bring tge needed respite.

“We are in the community spread phase now yes, but we are finding more cases and we are taking them out of the community and I think if we can continue to do that over the next few weeks or so, we will be making major in roads into winning this COVID-19 war.

He added that the NCDC records no added positive case for Lagos yesterday and that it was not a sign that all was well yet.

“I wouldn’t call that a success because we know they are out there, so we are going out and collecting samples, quite a few of which are still in the labs and are being tested now and I am almost certain that we will have some positive results out of these ones.

“So, this is not the time to be feeling that we are having a success if for one day we don’t have a positive result.

“Samples are being taken for screening from individuals with symptoms, known history of contact with COVID-19 infected persons to ascertain possibilities of their being infected and their status at the Emergency Operation Centre (EOC),” he said.

It will be recalled that private bodies are partnering the state for optimum delivery on tackling the pandemic, the likes of Guaranty Trust Bank partnered the state government in the provision of the Onikan Isolation Centre with 100 bed space capacity and 10 Intensive Care Units.

A body, Young President Organisation YPO, led by the Steering Committee Chairman, Dr. Richard Ajayi, in partnership with the state government also constructed another Isolation centre within two weeks at Eti Osa, with adequate equipments and is expected to be operational soon.

Dr. Abiola Fasina, the Emergency Healthcare Consultant at Eti Osa Isolation Centre noted that the facility offered a 90 bed capacity and 10 bed ICU.

At Cardiac and Renal Centre General Hospital Gbagada, some partitioning and rehabilitation works had been done to create space for treatment of COVID-19 patients, while the core values of the entity subsists, and it has 100 beds capacity and 20 ICU.