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In this opinion piece, Mr. Fola Adeola, Chairman, FATE Foundation and Coordinator, FATE Philanthropy Coalition for COVID-19 (FPCC) Support Fund shares his thoughts on the current COVID-19 pandemic and critical action steps required. 

  All Aboard…! Steering Nigeria’s COVID-19 Action Train

The first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Nigeria on the 27th of February 2020. Just a little over two months ago and, yet, it feels like a lifetime has elapsed.  The world we lived in then, is so much different from the one we are about to be released into, as the lockdown restrictions are lifted. When the lockdown was announced by President Muhammadu Buhari on the 27th of March, there were 65 confirmed cases in the country and the President’s Chief of Staff had just tested positive for the virus.  Today, we have confirmed over 2000 cases, and many of our beloved fellow citizens (more than 50) are no longer with us, having fallen in the wake of this novel coronavirus.  May the souls of the departed rest in peace, and to those of us who remain on the journey of life, may God grant wisdom.  We need it, desperately, at this time to navigate the complexities ahead.

The month we spent sheltering in place was, without question, challenging; but in our isolation there was an odd sort of togetherness, a shared helplessness with the rest of the world.  Literally, everybody was hunkered down, numbering their afflicted, and counting their dead.  The world went from an insignificant number of confirmed cases and an even more insignificant number of COVID-19 deaths on March 27th, to about three and a half million afflicted, and about a quarter of a million deaths as at last count. Some countries have had it worse than others. With the US recording over 60,000 deaths, and Italy, Spain and the UK each recording between 25,000 and 30,000 deaths, our own fifty-something fallen, in a population of almost 200 million, barely registers on the Richter scale of devastation in which the world has become engulfed.  But it is not a competition.  God knows we are not equipped to deal with what the countries of the West are going through. 

The sojourn ahead, the path to a “new normal” on the COVID Action Train that each country has been forced to navigate will be less unified, more particular to each nation’s circumstances and challenges than the shared humanity of sickness and loss. Each nation is tasked with the burden of its re-emergence. so let us turn our minds to our own COVID Action Train journey.

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