COVID 19 pandemic and intergovernmental relations in Nigeria: An overview

Abstract

The emergence of COVID-19 has significantly affected the socio-economic performance of virtually all countries worldwide, entire educational, commercial, sports and spiritual institutions are closed. High rate of inflation and unemployment has become order of the day as a result of lack of productivity and excessive expenditure for the treatment and rehabilitation of the COVID 19 victims and their families. In most federal systems, there is a usually juridical relation between levels or units of government. In such arrangement it is the constitution that majorly defines the relations. The study used observation of events among major actors and stakeholders as well as the secondary sources of data as methodology. The study revealed that despite many controversies
over the existence or other wise of the virus its evident that the virus is real and present in Nigeria with the death of many people and recovery of others. The study also revealed that a lot of disagreement occurred between the officials of federal government and their states counterpart especially at the identification and release of infected persons. The existence of the disease in some
states like Kogi and Cross rivers also depicted high level of rancor between the two levels of government. The study concluded that the disease is real and caused serious disharmony in relationships among levels of government in Nigeria. It further recommends that government should imbibe the culture of exposing the real victims so that people are cleared out of doubt and
government at all levels should learn to be sincere and committed to their responsibilities among others.