By Ishaya Ibrahim
Many banks in Lagos have on March 23, recorded an unusual high traffic of customers seeking to make cash withdrawals amid the fear that the city may soon go into a lockdown.
The Lagos State government announced that from March 23, its civil servants below grade level 13 would work from their homes after the number of those with the infection tripled in the last 72 hours.
This has exacerbated fear since Lagos is the epicentre of the Nigeria’s coronavirus cases, and the economic bastion of the country.
This newspaper has noticed large numbers banks’ customers making panic withdrawals in the city, a situation experts have warned can cripple the banking industry and the economy at large.
In Many of the banks visited, the queues at the ATM points are longer and the banking hall crowded, exceeding by far the threshold of not more than 20 congregants the Lagos state government ordered.
On the transport sector, our correspondent observed that there is compliance with the order prohibiting standing inside the Bus Rapid Transit (intra city mass transit). There is also compliance with the order for the buses to provide hand sanitizers.
However, there seems to be zero compliance by operators of the yellow buses on overcrowded vehicles. They still carry the regular number of passengers they are used to carrying, even though the sitting conditions give little or no room for prevention against the disease. And they also have no hand sanitizers in their buses.
Nigeria has 36 total cases of the coronavirus, with a projection of six new cases daily.
The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said that the first death Nigeria recorded of the coronavirus is a 67-year-old man, Suleiman Achimugu.
He, however, had an underlying ailment before contacting the coronavirus. He was said to be undergoing chemotherapy for cancer and only returned to the country recently from the United Kingdom.