Quick one on learning lessons

On Freshly Pressed this morning, one of the stories we talked about was this story from Ekiti state.

It’s all to easy to dismiss Prof. Aluko’s reaction as the typical one of a government that is disconnected from its people, and while that reaction will be right, it is as I said, too easy. This story from Ekiti brings us to one of the real problems we have in Nigeria: the poorly structured business environment we have in our markets.

Do those markets in Ekiti have properly respected walkways? Having walkways is the first step towards respecting social distancing.

Are the stalls well spaced from one another in the case of a fire outbreak? If the stalls are properly distanced, then it becomes easy to again maintain social distance.

Do utilities such as running water and toilets exist, and if they do, do they work? Because if they do, then you can keep the hygiene standards that you want to enforce to limit the kinds of places that the coronavirus can hang out in.

These are the kinds of questions we should be asking. And if we take a stroll through memory lane (not our own memory sadly), you’d find that standards became set in other climes because of disasters. In the UK for example, the Great Fire of London led to building standards in terms of properly spacing out buildings. The fires caused by German bombing during World War II led to the 1947 act where specific standards were set for buildings, pavements and walkways.

This is the reason why fires such as the Grenfell disaster from a few years ago tend to stay within a building, and even that one led to a review. We need to adopt a “never again” mentality here. But we just like to talk.