COVID -19 PANDEMIC MANAGEMENT: REVISITING THE NIGERIAN MILITARY EXPERIENCE

Abstract

Emerging infectious diseases like Covid -19 are a frequent cause of morbidity for the militaries and citizens alike. Significantly, when a pandemic occurs, there is often a lack of universally or centrally controlled mechanisms to detect or contain it especially at the early stage thus leaving every nation to fight for itself. In that case, it is extremely difficult for militaries to perform purely defensive roles being a major part of first responder in a pandemic situation. It is within this purview that this paper assesses Covid -19 pandemic that emanated from Wuhan city, China--in late December 2019 as it spread across countries. This piece examines the COVID -19 outbreak, and the concomitant roles of the military in Nigeria. As a life - threatening disease, the Nigerian Government declared lockdowns to halt its spread and mobilized the military personnel to enforce laws and order during the lockdown as part of the comprehensive pandemic response. Beyond this, the military offered commendable strategic health roles targeted at flattening the pandemic curve. This paper analyses the military's experiences in containing the COVID -19, the challenges and prospects. While, extant researchers gave general assessment of security forces, just a few had specifically looked at the military response as one of the first responders. Arising from this, the current piece extols the utilitarian value of the military given its timely and professional efforts during the pandemic outbreaks. It calls for improved civil/militaryrelations and mutually reinforcing relations to seamlessly contain future pandemics. The paper calls for the need to build capacity, create awareness and re-orientate the military towards humanitarian services and abetter pandemic-prepared society. It adopts a descriptive method of analysis, relying on secondary sources of data and qualitative analysis.