Post Covid19 Economy Will Demand Decision, Training, Solutions For Recovery

Source: Iyke Ozemena Esq.
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Some of the rudimentary issues induced by Covid pandemic have to be acknowledged in order to appreciate the enormity of economic devastation and havoc that have taken place across the globe.

Perhaps the best starting point is the experience in Wuhan, China where the first case was reported in December 2019. The panic alone caused a lot of loss of man-hour; then followed by actual attack of thousands if not millions, of workers and families resulting in hospitalization and death of some percentage of victims. There is no doubt that Chinese budget for 2019/2020 was over-stretched. The projects and all other economic activities expected to take place in that period via budget allocation were obviously short-changed by the sudden outbreak of Covid.

Beyond the financial cost of the global war against the scourge, some of the victims were skilled and expert corporate and private individuals. Their demise and or incapacitation meant huge losses for the economy. Training and replacement of them would certainly take a toll on the budget, but first, there must be a firm decision that it is the way forward.

Partial, complete lock-down and curfew were some of the measures applied in tackling the menace. During these periods no tourism, no economic activities took place, except those essential preserving services. That meant loss of productive hours for as long as it lasted. It also meant abandonment of projects, breach of contracts, rusting of facilities and equipment etc. Needless to analyse these consequences to the logical point of litigation, whether rational or irrational.

Every country as much as Nigeria borrowed a leaf from Chinese experience. Of course we are aware that the health care sector immediately became the battle field; both the staff and facilities were over-stretched to breaking point. The personnel became the next wave of attack and spread of the deadly disease. We may not know the actual cost inflicted on the global economy by covid.

However, what we do know is that the entire global economy was forced to stagnate and consequently driven several steps backwards. If we extrapolate to every nation these basic economic issues raised by the first case of covid the task of rebuilding the global economy would depend on massive training.

The pandemic was a sudden outbreak and it would be foolhardy to say that global infrastructure and security architecture were absolutely dependable when the disease broke out. Therefore a new security architecture would become imperative. The Paris/Copenhagen protocol on climate change and their mitigation provisions remain as helpless as ever. How can these provisions be enforced? Were they not meant to solve global problems staring us in the face? Where lies the burden of corporate social responsibility?

It is therefore apparent that post-covid world would expect at national levels the enactment of new legislation. For instance do you need the declaration of state of emergency under s. 305 of the 1999 Constitution for a complete or partial lock-down by the President or Governor? If that is the case, what then is the use of executive orders?

Does the doctrine of force-majeure alone compel governments and corporate organizations to break the law or implement policies against fundamental human right without any law authorizing that#?

Again the issue of social distancing has produced industrial innovation called ‘working from home’. This innovation seems to have been adopted to be the future of work place. Presently social distancing has proved difficult to enforce in crowded cities and where you have grass-root people in markets and social gatherings as well as religious meetings. It’s been reported quite widely that some religious groups find it difficult to maintain social distance during observance, believing that God would not allow the infection. What a pity. Why then is the world searching for vaccines?

With the World Health Organisation (WHO) saying covid has come to stay, the inevitable conclusion are that there must be at least one vaccine/medicine that cures covid. The world will remain indoors and online, living skeletal jobs outside the home. More and more people would hate work with a lot of people hating staying at home. But most importantly they would hate covid the root of the problems. Then the desire for entrepreneurship would expand and grow after the battle against covid is over.