By Tosin Olatokunbo
The Lagos state government could no longer afford to continue with the partial lockdown of the state as the action has brought untold hardship to residents and businesses, Governor Babajide Sanwo-olu has said.
The governor said a decision has now been reached to fully re-open the state for business in a matter of days.
Sanwo-Olu however, said the level of compliance with safety measures rolled out by the state to stop the spread of the corona virus pandemic will determine next line of action.
The measures include social distancing and regular hand washing in public and private places.
The state’s helmsman who stated this after the State’s Security Council meeting held at the State House in Marina on Sunday, said security operatives have been directed to enforce total compliance. .
A statement from the government quoted said officials from the Lagos State Safety Commission and Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency would visit restaurants, companies, religious houses to assess their level of readiness.
It said “We are reviewing and considering how the phased unlocking will happen. If we see a huge level of compliance, then it can happen in the next two to three weeks.
If not, it could take a month or two months. It is until we are sure all of these players are ready to conform to our guidelines,” the Governor added,
With the size of the state’s economy and numbers of businesses that operate in its domain, the governor said the Lagos could not afford to keep people and businesses on lockdown permanently.”
The governor stated that , “We are at a level where we are reviewing the other arms of the economy. In the coming days, we will be starting what we call Register-to-Open, which means all players in the restaurant business, event centres, entertainment, malls, and cinemas will go through a form of re-registration and space management.
There is a regulation that will be introduced to supervise this move. We will be coming to their facilities to assess their level of readiness for a future opening.
I don’t know when that opening will happen in the weeks ahead, but we want these businesses to begin to tune themselves to the reality of COVID-19 with respect to how their work places need to look like.
For us, it is not to say they should re-open fully tomorrow or any time; there has to be a process guiding the re-opening.
We will be mandating LASEPA and Safety Commission to begin the enumeration process and the agencies will be communicating with all relevant businesses and houses in the days ahead.
I must, however, caution that this should not be misinterpreted as a licence for full opening; it is certainly not. The State’s economy is not ready for that now.”
Meanwhile, the magazine learnt that pressure has seriously been mounted on the state government by various business and political leaders to re-open the state following similar decision by other state governments across the country.
For instance, Borno, Yobe and Ebonyi state governors, had last week, ordered a total re-opening of their states.
