The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control has said the autonomy of states makes it difficult for the agency to enforce COVID-19 guidelines.
In recent times, some state governments have relaxed NCDC guidelines such as physical distancing to curb COVID-19 spread.
For instance, the Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, on June 12 directed the reopening of all football viewing centres in the state after the leadership of the Soccer Viewing Centres Association, Kano State chapter, paid him a visit at the Government House in Kano. Operators of football viewing centres in some other states have also reopened.
Speaking on Friday, the Acting Director of Prevention, Programmes and Knowledge Management at the NCDC, Dr Chinwe Ochu, said states had a level of autonomy that made it difficult for the agency to enforce its COVID-19 guidelines.
Ochu spoke at a webinar monitored by our correspondent which was organised by Nigeria Health Watch with the theme, ’Promoting behavioural change that improves public health and social measures through risk communication.’ The session was moderated by Dr Inya Ode.
Speaking on the challenges facing the NCDC, Ochu said, “Initially when we started communicating our messages (to the people), we adopted the top-bottom approach. We developed our messages and we let the states adapt them to their own contexts. But we had to move away from that to the bottom-up approach by engaging the communities to develop their own risk messages and we have discovered that this is more impactful.
“We live in a society where almost everything is politicised and we have come to see health being politicised and we had to handle this politics regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s being a very big challenge.
“Health is on a concurrent list, so states are given autonomy to decide what they want to do for their own people. When we come out as a national agency and we say people should do this and not do that, the states still have some level of autonomy that makes it difficult for us (as an agency) to enforce whatever it is. And of course, as an agency, we don’t enforce whatever it is that we share with the people.”
Ochu also cited other challenges facing the NCDC to include lack of trust in the government.
She said, “When we are providing evidence, people don’t see it; they see us as the government talking. We are transparent in the evidence we provide to the people but they are now interpreting our transparency as conspiracy, so a lot of conspiracy theories have come up, and this is a big challenge.”
A guest speaker at the webinar, Dr Nandita Murukutla, urged the media to tackle misinformation. She also stated that people tended to trust more in their religious and community leaders, hence such sources should be utilised in disseminating COVID-19 facts to the people.
