Hon Segun Onilude:        The lockdown as you may have seen along the road leading to Badagry is effective. The lockdown is for our own good. They say, it’s better to be patient at home than been a patient at Yaba, it’s better to lockdown than to breakdown.

We are in the grassroots so the onus falls on us to make the directive of the Chief of Armed Forces, President Muhammudu Buhari effective.

We are the footsoldiers that carried out the directives. For it to be effective, we first did sensitization, to let our people know what the coronavirus is all about. We taught them about how it spread and the effects. We equally educate them on how to prevent it,

 – it is better to prevent than to cure it.

Thereafter we gave them leaflets. We identify different segments within  the community. The different stakeholders, the market women, Community Development Associations (CDA)/CDC, professionals, trade unions, artisans, traditional leaders and chiefs were all invited for sensitization.

Having done that for the lockdown directive to be very effective, we called for a security meeting with the Army, Navy, Air Force, Customs, Police, Civil Defense, Immigrations, vigilante groups and every one of them within our local government. We all agreed that the lockdown is in our own interest and we said road blocks should be mounted so as to keep everybody at home.

We went after the recalcitrant who will always want to beat the system and forced everyone to obey the stay at home order.  So in making the lockdown effective those were the measures we employed.

The hunger issue is a reality, even before the outbreak of COVID-19. So when the issue of virus outbreak came up, it was an avenue for the people to make their views heard. The federal and state governments did some palliatives and some individuals too also did some palliatives. We, as local government, equally did our own palliatives.

Initially, aside from the sensitization we gave them sanitizers. We now did our food stimulus palliative package where an individual was given 5kg of rice, 5kg of beans, and 5kg of garri, tomato paste, groundnut oil and seasoning. We did the packaging ourselves to ensure they are correct measurements.

We engaged different stakeholders CDAs, traditional leaders, political leaders, artisans and others to identify indigent members of their respective communities and they submitted their lists. It was after they submitted their lists that we released the food items to them.

I was involved to ensure they were well distributed to about 2000 individuals.

In the light of relaxing the lockdown, the federal and state governments have made the use of facemasks compulsory in public places. I can even see you’re using one branded with the Badagry Local Government logo. So what are you doing to encourage the use of facemask by the people of Badagry?

It’s almost becoming a habit now, as you can see, almost everyone in the secretariat is using it. When people are better informed you don’t need to exact force to impress it upon them to use.  They know the danger of not using it. The use of facemask is the prevention of infecting of other people.

By tomorrow or next we will be distributing over 3000 facemasks particularly to all our health officials who are more prone.   Then we ensure we give to every member of staff of the local government, then the general public. You can even design to fit the ankara you’re wearing. It has become fashionable now.

People are responding except for some very few who are afraid. I tell them that it is better for someone to know his or her status on time, rather than to live in ignorance.

Testing positive is not a death sentence. Once you’re confirmed positive, then you go for treatment. We have had prominent people like governors who have tested positive and they have recovered.

My advice to them is to stay at home and play-safe.  They should also take their basic hygiene very serious.