Coronavirus: Ahmad Lawan shakes up everyone

Ogochukwu Ikeje

HE would have been in character if he toed the official line and tried to calm everybody down. Only one person, an Italian, has been diagnosed with the virus in Nigeria. Dont panic. Avoid rumours, and sanitise your hands. And if you should have a fever and start coughing and sneezing, stay indoors. Government is doing everything to keep the virus from spreading.

President Muhammadu Buhari has helped to entrench that line, echoed by various government officials, including Minister of Health Osagie Ehanire.

Senate President Ahmad Lawan is not one for that line, even though he was dismissed as the executives rubber stamp, being in the same party as the commander-in-chief, when he became leader of the Ninth Assembly last year.

Truth be told, panic is dangerous. On January 27, 2002 munition explosions at a military facility in Ikeja, Lagos drove over 1000 people to their death in a dirty, water hyacinth-covered canal. So, calm, even in the midst of danger, is advised.

But Alhaji Lawan (APC Yobe North) knows that calm is not enough when you are dealing with a virus that has now infected over 1000 persons worldwide since barely three months ago when it was discovered, killed 3,015 in China and 267 elsewhere in the world, mostly in Italy and Iran, a virus that can travel via a sneeze or a cough.

Alhaji Lawan has cried out at every opportunity about the dangers overlooked if we fail to take appropriate measures against a virus that spreads like wildfire. Not caring what anyone else thought, he shouted about lack of proper screening facilities at the nations ports. Then he cried out that in Abuja, capital of Africas biggest economy, and in the neighbouring central states, there is not a room where anyone who suddenly goes down with coronavirus can be isolated. On Wednesday he complained that the ministry of Finance had not released the budgeted for the centre for disease control to tackle coronavirus.

Alhaji Lawans lament or wake-up call was meant for everyone but the Southeast and their governors should take it as a personal rebuke. The region is blessed with giants in every field, perhaps even more so in business, which takes its people to far-flung places like China, the epicentre of the coronavirus. Not much has been heard from the governors since the coronavirus hit the global stage. Have they uttered a word on business trips to China? Is there any information as to when the last Igbo man returned from that country? Is there any testing of any kind going on in the Southeast? Is there any testing facility of any sort, from Owerri to Awka, and from Abakiliki to Anambra, Enugu and Umuahia?

Anambra lawmakers have taken their government to task asking what it was doing about the virus. There is no clear answer as yet.

Elsewhere across the world, the coronavirus consciousness is manifest. The other day, someone in Britain said the virus could well be spreading undetected in the country, a remark that has also been made about the United States of America by Americans themselves.

On our shores, silence or calming nerves seems to be the preferred strategy. What is the priority of governance in the Southeast? Is it to patch a few roads, sink a borehole and receive traditional rulers in Government House? Are the governors concerned about leaving a real legacy by thinking ahead?

This epidemic can be pushed back, said a WHO chief, but only with a collective, coordinated and comprehensive approach that engages the entire machinery of governmentCountries have been planning for scenarios like this for decades.

Has anyone in the Southeast been thinking about possible scenarios like coronavirus and how to curtail it when it comes?

More and more countries are confirming their first cases of the virus. Cameroon and Togo, close home, are among the latest. Egypt has detected 12 new cases.

Alhaji Lawan has spoken loud enough. But do the authorities realise the danger? Was anyone disturbed by the report that the 158 passengers who flew in with the Italian index case cannot be contacted? Or are we hoping and praying, as we usually do, that just as the virus came, it will also disappear?