COVID-19: Oyetola, Too Impatient With Osun

By ISAAC OLUSESI

This moment in globalization is not a moment of talks about talks, all talks; not a moment of passivity either. It is a maddening moment to mitigate infuriating outgrowth, a moment of swift professional, operational actions, transnational. Globalization has had no impact, spurring economic recovery, greater employment opportunities and poverty eradication; it is however, not so in the world health sector where globalization has brought its direct and profoundly impacting drastic actions to inhibit, for instance the world health emergency, now on hand, the scourge of the Coronavirus pandemic, the COVID-19 quagmire that has led to the lockdown of the world global village.

The contemporary be call, challenge of the global Coronavirus bog has revealed the vulnerability of the entire countries of the world to the gravely ugly malady virus and accentuated the urgent present decisive handling of the ravaging made to order respiratory virus that spares no nation, nobody in particular, of its devastating multitudinous consequences, underscoring a much more general and complex health call out, facing the world at the moment, for which no known antiviral has been found. Globalization of the ongoing strategies against the virus web has substituted whatever bio-polarity of the past; the world today has never witnessed such massive reality of mutuality, shared responsibility, genuine partnership and benefits thereof at incapacitating the virus malodorous outreach. Globalizat- ion thus, remains the driving force of the evolution of the cessation of COVID-19, the Big Bad Wolf.

Nigeria has been part of the management of COVID-19 morass, ensuring closely that the dreaded virus is not loaded against us by penetratingly taken our mutual health interest into effective consideration. The clinically confirmed cases of madding COVID-19, quarantined at isolation centres, now on deadly ascendancy across the country with trails of fitality, are said to be responding to treatment, not undermining the capacity of the nation’s health facilities, now heavily boosted to cripple the gripping dominance and speed of the spread of the abrasive ruled based virus and its rising adverse effects on the nation. The necessary mechanism put in place by the federal government to fight the COVID-19 macabre is aimed at keeping the nation safe from the laboratory virus.

State of Osun, in the same health boat of the virus threatened nation by all indicators of COVID-19, the Beelzebub, has left nothing to chance, with Governor Gboyega Oyetola impatiently committed to requisite health collaboration at tackling the malignant global virus in Osun. ‘‘I don’t want a single life lost in our state’’- the Oyetola oft-quoted mantra this COVID-19 session is the reason for his tactical impatience with the malevolent virus; the dictum reaffirms his commitment to the Osun health interest and dignified human existence. The maxim: ’Suru lo l’aiye’, ‘make haste slowly,’ is not invented for Oyetola exclusively in all matters of public health, public safety, public order and public security in Osun; the quadruple, inextricably inked for the enhancement of democracy, implying his huge impatient sensitivity to the bilious, bad tempered virus. His impatience for COVID-19, his impatience, not beggarly, to knock the knock-down-drag-out virus out of circulation in Osun, is motivated correspondingly by his impatience to the global urgency to comply with regular hygienic and sanitary practices for the containment of the pandemic.

Upon the first confirmed dreadful COVID-19 case in Lagos, Oyetola’s impatient even with himself, made a bee line for the spiteful virus as he took one quick responsible, responsive step, leading by example. He subjected himself and wife to test, returned negative; inaugurated Technical Action on Disease Outbreak & Response Team that put up effective public sensitization to the virus prevention; carried out health examination on immigrant miners, the Chinese at Osun mining sites and “no one was found infected,” and he passionately encouraged all in the state to adhere strictly to the infection control measures. And against the first index case of the virus infection in Osun, he made it mandatory for potentially infectious persons to submit to isolation and treatment, refusal, to earn arrest by court warrant; legally instituted assault/attempted murder and compensation charges respectively against anyone who reveals the COVID-19 status of any person or exposes the other person to COVID-19 and any law enforcement officer, exhibiting prejudices to the rights of COVID-19 victim; and he gave 08035025692, 08033908772, 08056456250 or 293 Osun toll free helpline as emergency lines to call to report all suspected COVID-19 cases.

Such is the high level of Oyetola’s guided impatience that also outrightly banned all public gatherings; suspended public visits to correctional centers, police cells, all detention places; and lately, locked down Osun, with land boundaries earlier shut down and movement of vehicles banned amidst assurances of government commitment to the protection of the rights of Osun residents and institution of 6months’ jail or an option of fine for lockdown violators, false disseminators of COVID-19 gibberish information and promoters of COVID-19 purported cure ditto. “We believe this is the way to go,’’ Oyetola said, visibly unhappy. Alas! Sad, very sad, urging the federal government to extend its lockdown order to other states, including Osun, with soaring (up) COVID-19 confirmed cases.

Globally speaking, compliance with the subsisting stay-at-home (SAH) order is a function of the level of civilization, the key to the post-COVID-19 world new health view, with the globetrotting elite, the glitterati presently recording greater deployment of the order compared to the restrictive, the ‘un-global’ elite who are disproportionately affected by the SAH order. But Oyetola, strongly self-convinced on his drive against COVID-19 ruination, has continued restive, prospecting giant to have Osun benefit impressively from the post-COVID-19 benign world new health view, beneficial to all nations and peoples, the foundation for enduring, equitable growth and development as important component of world stability, peace and security, fundamental to sustainable democracy.

And Oyetola’s impatience to cushioning the add up effects of the SAH order is the state Food Relief Bank for greater good of Osun people, sprouting gilt-edged life and living in the state under the SAH order. And no one is ruing about consolation for all; everybody is beguiled, interested. Lo! No bad feelings in Osun as Oyetola, the state benefactor forges ahead.
OLUSESI is Assistant Director, Publicity, Research & Strategy (DPR&S), All Progressives Congress (APC) State of Osun