HISTORICIZING THE POLITICS OF COVID-19 PALLIATIVES TOWARDS EFFECTIVE PEACE BUILDING IN NIGERIA: THE EBONYI STATE EXPERIENCE

Abstract

By the second week of March 2020, Nigeria came under the threat of covid-19 pandemic. Trammelled by the global lockdown on international borders, the need for interstates’ border closure to curtail the widespread of the virus in the country became imperative. With the first index case recorded in Ogun state and subsequently in many other states, Federal government at one time or the other announced that state governments are to inaugurate covid-19 Task Force in order to ensure that there is safety to the lives of Nigerians. In doing that, Federal Government decided to give palliatives through the state governments to cushion the effects of the lockdown. Rather than sharing the palliatives, a dawn to dusk curfew in Ebonyi State was announced without necessarily providing any kind of economic assistance to the people. This created serious problems to the day-to-day economic activities of the people to the extent that corporate bodies, civil society and wealthy Nigerians began to make cash donations to governments in order to mitigate the hardship associated with the lockdown. This study therefore interrogates the measures adopted by state governments towards distributing the palliatives without flouting covid-19 safety measures in the state. Materials for this study were sourced from both primary and secondary sources while historical and analytical methodology were adopted. The paper concludes that Ebonyi state government’s approach to the federal government palliatives was a deceptive peace mechanism that allowed people to continuously compiling their names while the lockdown .had been relaxed.