Palliatives for distribution. Photo Credit: Radio Nigeria Archieve
Some development experts have called for a framework that provides safety net systems for the most vulnerable in the society.
They stated this on Wednesday at an event in Abuja tagged: “Post Covid-19 Environment: Stories of Community Resilience and Solidarity,” organised by Oxlade Consulting with support from the Open Society Initiative for West Africa, OSIWA.
Professor Adenike Emeke of the Institute of Education, University of Ibadan said the distribution palliative was good as it does not address the needs of the people.
“Actually, we don’t even have a social register that we can really depend on so we need to also work around that to have a social register and try to see how people can fend for themselves. Professor Emeke noted.
“If you share palliatives, it is not the way forward but if you prepare people to be resilience, to think outside the box, to come out with ideas that can be useful to them and then they can come together and do things together, with that you can find out that there will be better result,” she added.
Oluwaseun Onigbinde from a Civil Society Organization Budgit Nigeria said the hallmark of decency in any society was the manner in which its most vulnerable citizens were treated.
Onigbinde advised the government must provide an adequate framework to support the people.
“We need to build a social contract framework because the fact that people are resilient does not mean that the government should not carry out its responsibility. So, the first point I’m making is that we have a palliative problem and we need a social protection policy,”
The Programme Director of Oxlade Consulting, Alice Ige said the project on Advancing Community access to equitable COVID 19 response collated stories across three West Africa countries, Nigeria, Senegal and Ghana on how people build resilience during COVID 19 pandemic.
According to her, findings reveals that the problems and challenges were the same, ‘’for example in Ghana, government announced distribution of palliatives but we observed that people were unable to access the parliatives, similar experience in Nigeria and Ghana. These individuals were struggled through difficult means to survive during the pandemic’’’
Writing by Daniel Adejo, editing by Hadiza Abdulrahman