Life after covid-19 would be tough — FG finally admits

The Buhari administration has recently assured Nigerians that fears over life after covid-19 should not be entertained so long he remains in charge of the country.

There has been concerns that life after covid-19 would be tough considering the global economic impact of the covid-19 pandemic, and the unconvincing manner in which the Buhari administration has so far handled the effects of disease, especially as it relates to the millions of poor households who are struggling to survive under the now over two months old lockdown.


The signs have been there from the outset, and CNN's Fareed Zakaria, was among the first individuals to raise the alarm that oil dependent countries have a lot to worry about as life after covid-19 will be 'chaotic'.

Speaking in a publication by The Washington Post on April 5th, 2020, Fareed said, "Even as we are just beginning to confront the magnitude of the shock caused by the Covid-19 pandemic we need to wrap our minds around a painful truth. We are in the early stages of what is going to become a series of cascading crises, reverberating throughout the world.



"The shock of Covid-19 is being felt in countries like China, Italy, Spain, and the US, but next will come “explosions in the developing world,” where testing has been scarce, as are resources to cope with an economic crash.

"Oil-producing states could see chaos: with oil prices crashing even before Covid-19 hit, countries like Libya, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, and Venezuela could see economic catastrophes resulting in “political turmoil, refugees, even revolutions, on a scale we have not seen for decades.


"The world entered this cris*s with mountains of public debt and with global cooperation at a nadir. The problem we face is broad and global but unfortunately the responses are increasingly narrow and parochial”.

However, while the Buhari administration is trying to be positive, it did acknowledged the current reality staring the country in the face, and has on Thursday, revised downward its growth projections for the economy, saying the economy could shrink as much as 8.9% in this fiscal year.




This was made known by the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, during the National Economic Council meeting held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Ahmed told the State Governors who are the NEC members at the meeting presided over by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, that in a best case, without any fiscal measures, that the contraction could reach 4.4%,.


With crude oil prices plunging into lowest level at the international market over the past few months due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Nigerian government has been troubled as crude exports account for over 80 percent of the nation’s foreign exchange earnings on yearly basis.



What all these means is that the country has some rough days ahead as the world deals with the aftermath of a disease that has since late last year, put governments across the world, to a stern test.