The Social Conundrums of COVID-19 Pandemic and Stringent Lockdown Policy Response: Nigeria in Context

Abstract

Abstract The global spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic created a grave public health crisis, threatened human survival and called for stringent lockdown policy response implementation. Further to the implementation, studies have been provided to explain the response impacts in developed countries with little attention on low and middle-income countries with a large population. The ones which focused on Nigeria were economic-based while paying less attention to social structures that influence development. Therefore, in the form of a documentary review, this paper addressed such academic rarity with an emphasis on poverty and livelihood, employment and workforce, education, human rights, crime and security to understand the situation in Nigeria. It established widespread poverty, crime perpetration, human rights abuse, massive job loss in both formal and informal sectors, disruption in education affecting 40 million students as the social impacts of the lockdown. Therefore, this paper emphasised social security for the general population, incentives to businesses against losses, improvement of the healthcare and education system, monitoring of police officers and reforms in managing future pandemics.