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Lagos conducts social media poll on whether to lock down or not

The Lagos State Government is conducting an opinion poll on twitter to determine whether Lagosians want an extension to the lockdown or not. This uncanny move is being conducted via its twitter handle and on Wednesday and had garnered over 64,000 votes. Lagos State has a population of over 15 million.

Last week, Lagos State threatened to revert to full lockdown if there is no improvement in adherence to the public health guidelines.

Poll Results

The poll was also featured on the Facebook Page of LASG but did not gather as much view as it has on Twitter. It is unclear if the state plans to use the data for decisions on whether to revert the state to a lockdown mode or not. To view the ongoing poll results (which has a day left before it closes) users will have to take a vote. We did and the current results suggest most voters prefer a lockdown to help contain the virus spread. With one day left about 49.8% to prefer another lockdown.

Twitter polls are not entirely scientific and do not provide further insights into reasons for voter patterns. It also does not publicly reveal the sex, age, and demographics of the voters. Most of the voters need not reside in Lagos. Nairametrics, however, understand details of the result can be provided to Lagos State from Twitter helping it better understand voter patterns.

Millions of Nigerians take to social media daily to track Covid-19 updates and also share their views and opinions. According to data from Statcounter, Facebook and Twitter records 47% and 30% usage by Nigerians and are by far Nigeria’s preferred social media platforms. Twitter has however recorded a surge in recent weeks, partly buoyed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the need for faced paced commentary.

Lockdown Threat

Lagos State Government threatened to revert to full lockdown if there is no improvement in adherence to the public health guidelines. The government noted that in the first week of the easing of the lockdown, there had been a repetitive and flagrant disregard for the earlier announced health guidelines, a move that could frustrate the government’s efforts to contain the virus.

“As a government elected to uphold the security of its citizens, which includes health security, we will not hesitate to review the terms of #EasingTheLockdown if we do not see an improvement in the adherence to our public health guidelines over the next couple of days,”Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu said in a tweet.

Covid-19 cases continue to rise

The spread of novel Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) in Nigeria has continued to rise rapidly as the latest statistics provided by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control revealed Nigeria now has 4,971 confirmed cases. On the 13th of May 2020, 184 new confirmed cases and 6 deaths were recorded in Nigeria. Lagos as usual lead the rate of new cases and now has a total of 2041, followed by Kano (707), Abuja at 370, Katsina (224), Bauchi (206), Borno (188), Jigawa (141), Ogun (127), Gombe (119), Kaduna (116), Sokoto (112), Edo (89), Zamfara and Oyo (73).

Kwara State has recorded 53 cases, Osun (42), Rivers (33), Kebbi (31), Nasarawa (28), Delta (22), Adamawa (21), Yobe and Plateau (20), Ondo (18), Taraba and Akwa Ibom (17), Ekiti (15), Enugu (12), Niger (10), Ebonyi (9), Bayelsa (6), Benue (4), Imo (3), Abia and Anambra have recorded 2 cases each.

Over the last 75 days since the first case of the virus hit Lagos on February 28th Lagos state now has on average 27 cases per day. The cases have since spiked in the last 3 weeks hitting over 50 a day.