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Sometimes life hands you an aesthetically grotesque basket of deeply rotten lemons and ensures that by no magic up human sleeves will lemonades be created.
It is such a time that humanity has found itself in the past 5 months or thereabout.
A virus that has defied expert opinions, religious predictions and collective hope that it is only a storm in a teacup and has gone ahead to bludgeon the human race to a state of compulsory moratorium.

The decision of the Nigerian Presidency to begin a systematic easing of the lockdown and gradual re-introduction of the citizenry to the normalcy they were forced to vacate weeks ago has been greeted with a spectrum of responses.
As usual, keypad technocrats, armchair generals and newspaper stand enthusiasts have debated this all-important headline to a point of politico-intellectual orgasm.
Predictably and rather unfortunately, those arguments have been presented the Nigerian style- sentimental, one-sided and conspicuously lacking in perspectives.


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To be fair, the Chief Incident Commander of the disease response, the President himself, did himself no great favours as regards clarity and passing across his train of thoughts. Never one to be associated with an oratorical gusto, the President unsurprisingly failed to establish a rapport with the citizenry with his delivery.
Monotonous, bland and poorly proselytizing, he simply read out the script like a riot code and kissed us goodnight. Important to note that at a time like this, a more explanatory, fatherly, detailed chat spiced up with questions from the press for clarification was obviously the better option.
Whenever a nation enters into unchartered territory, the onus is on the Head of the House to walk everyone through it in the simplest of written and body languages.
But that’s by the way.

Often times, our myopic and selfish analysis fail to present any evidence that we at least, remotely understand the agony of tough and sometimes impossible choices the leaders have to sift through to arrive at a final decision.
Little wonder the political chess board has never being the permanent residence of the highly intellectual.

In the 60s, an American Media Franchise was born and christened Star Trek. A notable practice of the movie franchise was called Kobayashi maru. It was in simple terms, a test in a no-win scenario.
In simpler terms, a “Damned if you do and at the same time, damned if you don’t” scenario.
It’s the blinding web every government in the world has had to get in bed with. A surging number of positive cases on the one hand and a world and national economies diving into oblivion faster than a plane shot out of the sky on the other. To stay locked down, holding hands while singing kumbaya and hoping the virus backs off or take the chance, reopen the economy and hope to the high heavens you have not just opened the very gates of hell itself.

Heads of State and government fulfil a mind-blowing paradox. They happen to be some of the
loneliest people on earth- in the midst of hundreds of aides, advisers and cabinet officials. All of whom throw diverse pieces of advice, pleas and facts in their helpless faces at the same time.
The final decision, often agonizingly, is left for just one man/woman to make. His/Her name tagged to it forever in history. Like President Truman allowed; “The buck stops here”
President Bill Clinton once said “Being a president is like running a cemetery: you’ve got a lot of people under you and nobody’s listening”.

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This is the sort of conundrum President Buhari faces. A rising number of cases putting the total at 2000+, inadequate testing, an overly stretched healthcare system in the disease epicentre, inadequate palliatives, a strange situation in the most densely populated Northern State, health workers (typically inadequate) now testing positive, a near collapse of an already frail health centre, pockets of insecurity here and there and of course, an economy on its way laid flat on a gurney to the Intensive Care Unit.

Into that turkey shoot of a mix, add the personal loss of his own Chief of Staff.
Turn on your TV and watch CNN and you’d realise he’s not the only one without answers. This is a virus dealing us decisive blows with ruthless efficiency. A virus so devastating, treatment is largely supportive.
The victory of this disease will not be measured in eradication but a bent curve. This is precisely why nations all over the world are beginning to slowly reopen. It’s not rocket science at this stage that we’d have to live through it.
What then will wining look like? Top on the list would be a successful vaccine. Others will be a successful enforcement of guidelines on social distancing, herd immunity and believe or not, a psychological believe that the worst is behind us.
All will have to happen both simultaneously and in sequential order. It’s a hydra-headed enemy and only a multi-focal prong approach will do.


That the relaxation of the lockdown is coming too early is a fair point, that it is coming at the exact right time is neither far from the truth too. Sometimes there are no right nor wrongs. This is one of those times.
More than ever before the call to arms against this monster must be answered by all. We must all become responsible. We are all stakeholders. We either try to win together or boy, we’d all be served up toast in the cold hands of the novel virus.
In the meantime, cases will keep rising (certainly) but if Nigeria (and indeed the rest of the world) was a real life character, the role will fall to Ferdinand Foch, French WW1 General whose famous

“My Center is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I shall attack” quote will fit only too perfectly as the world marches on injured, burned but absolutely resolute.
We shall overcome (but behave yourself).


Article by @seal_lumide
Source blog; https://drdami..com/2020/05/covid-19-easing-lockdown-nigerias.html