Lagos Lockdown: We Don’t Know How To Survive Without Working For Two Weeks – Residents
Africa’s largest city, Lagos was deserted Tuesday, March 31st, 2020 after being locked down, in the government’s latest effort to eradicate the spread of coronavirus.
Businesses were closed, markets abandoned and streets empty as the usually chaotic megacity of 20 million, along with the capital Abuja, shuddered to a halt on the first full day of a two-week shutdown.
Police in protective equipment manned checkpoints, trucks carrying non-essential items were turned back and youths were spotted playing football on a usually traffic-clogged highway.
It is like putting people in prison,
said minibus taxi driver Mutiu Adisa.
I don’t know how people can survive for two weeks without working to make money.
Nigeria embarked late Monday on one of Africa’s most ambitious efforts at social distancing after recording 135 confirmed cases of coronavirus (COVID-19), with two deaths.
Enforcing the stay-at-home order in the overcrowded slums of Lagos will be a mammoth challenge as millions of poor depend on their daily earnings to survive.
Officials insist the draconian measures are needed urgently to ward off an explosion in infections that could easily overwhelm the weak health system in Africa’s most populous nation.
To reduce the number of people with coronavirus, we know they need to stop movement,
60-year-old engineer, Ogun Nubi Victor said.
But there is no money for the citizens, people are just sitting at home, with nothing to eat. How do we survive?
In an attempt to ease the pain, Lagos State authorities have pledged to supply basic food rations to some 200,000 of the city’s neediest households.
Source: Punch
Justin Nwosu is the founder and publisher of Flavision. His core interest is in writing unbiased news about Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. He’s a strong adherent of investigative journalism, with a bent on exposing corruption, abuse of power and societal ills.
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