IS EDO CURFEW FOR CORONAVIRUS OR INSECURITY? By Comrade Osazee Edigin 

IS EDO CURFEW FOR CORONAVIRUS OR INSECURITY? By Comrade Osazee Edigin

I think it’s about time we tell ourselves the truth and nothing but the truth. How did we just decide to punish and retrogressed ourselves due to lack of understanding of an issue like the Coronavirus pandemic?

Going by the ravaging nature of Coronavirus in Europe and the USA in the midst of their advance medicine and up to date medical facilities, one is forced to believe there are two types of Coronavirus in those climes and Nigeria.

What I have seen in Nigeria and Edo state, in particular, is a case of a copy and paste approach to the seemly fight against the virus. If it is same virus that is in Europe and America we have in Nigeria, we all would have been dead long ago. A virus we are unable to create a vaccine or cure for.

Nightlife is completely dead in Edo state due to the self-imposed curfew by the state government that runs between 10 pm and 5 am. A curfew that only created an opportunity for law enforcement agents to extort at will. The enthusiasm exhibited by law enforcement agents in Edo state in enforcing the curfew if same is deployed to fighting insecurity in the state, we all can close our two eyes in the night. It’s not the enforcement that is the motivation but the money to be made from extortion. From 8 pm, the city is almost empty even as businesses are almost shut down to avoid being extorted by those saddled with enforcement.

I earnestly wish we don’t have the same Coronavirus in Europe and in the USA in Nigeria. The reality is that you don’t tell a blind man there is rainfall. Coronavirus has come to stay and we have little or nothing to contribute to it, let’s manage it in its peculiarity to us as a people and make progress and stop the copy and paste approach.

EDO STATE GOVERNMENT SHOULD REVIEW THE CURFEW TO SAVE THE STATE COMMERCIAL NIGHTLIFE.

Comrade Osazee Edigin AICMC
writes from Benin City.