The Unintended Multi-Dimensional Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic Policy Response in Nigeria

Abstract

The meat of this work is on unintended consequences that emanated from Nigeria's policy response to COVID-19. These consequences were highlighted and premised on the Nigerian government's arbitrary copying of Western countries' strategies without customizing them to suit its peculiarities. The work employed discourse analysis to interrogate the various ways the COVID-19 policy response of Nigeria impacted on livelihoods of her citizens especially the poor and vulnerable. Unintended consequences of government COVID-19 policy responses are multidimensional in nature impacting the socio-cultural, political, and economic lives of Nigerians. Specifically, issues like an increase in domestic violence and gender-based violence, price gauging, and food scarcity, security agencies' excessiveness, palliative measures corruption, social ceremonies, and burial rites, were discussed as indirect outcomes of COVID-19 response strategies in Nigeria. Exposing how a biological crisis and efforts to contain it inadvertently created survival anxieties. Using secondary sources such internet, books, newspaper, and journals, the paper argued that Nigeria copied western response strategies without customizing them to reflect her environmental realities. Some of these unintended consequences would not have emerged if Nigeria were reflective in the development of her COVID-19 policy responses. Unfortunately, Nigeria condemned herself irretrievably to Western approaches. Her palliative programs were marred by a lack of transparency and accountability legacy of Nigeria's public service system. The paper contended that Nigerian political leadership failed to use COVID-19 policy response execution to reclaim lost public trust. Rather the COVID-19 palliative program execution has further widened the existing mistrust gap between government and citizens.