https://allafrica.com/stories/202101060113.html
Nigeria saw it’s largest rise in coronavirus cases on Tuesday at 1,354 reported cases from 21 states. This number is a new high for Nigeria as it surpassed their previous number, 1,204, which was recorded the monday before. Shortly after, Nigeria saw a new record for daily reported cases as well. The high amount of new cases coming in have increased the total number of cases from the start of the pandemic to 92,705. Though all these new cases, Nigeria had their lowest death toll they had seen in weeks, with only one death in the span of 24 hours. The total death toll from the virus in Nigeria is now 1,319. Health experts believe the reason for this increase is the lower amount of guard and weak enforcement of protocols especially in the countries major airports in Abuja and Lagos. The spread is manly concentrated in these two popular areas. active cases in the country have rose from around 3,000 some weeks ago to over 11,000. The NCDC said that if Nigerians fail to comply to covid safety protocols during this festive period, it could get much worse.
This is bad news for a country like Nigeria because they are not as prepared to combat the disease as other countries such as the US may be. They lack the economic ability to go into another lockdown and their hospitals would not be able to handle the cases if the country were to see a big outbreak. If the cases continue to rise, the country will have to resort to lockdown and many people will lose jobs and possibly fall into poverty, being only able to pay for absolute necessities or going into debt.
One thing we talk about when going into geo-politics or just elements of power on it’s own is how a country may have power based on its geographical location. Nigeria once had this power as they where found one of the biggest areas for oil in Africa. Although this power was lost because of the price in oil dropping and limited fiscal space. Nigeria is in a recovery stage and a huge outbreak of the virus would put a huge dent in their recovery that would be harsh for them to take.