Recession inevitable if COVID-19 persists beyond 6 months – Nigeria’s Finance Minister reveals

Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed has revealed the country will go into recession if the Coronavirus pandemic persists longer than six months.

She made this known when she appeared on Channels TV on Friday March 27.

“We are hopeful that this pandemic will be limited in time. If it is an average of three months, we should be able to close the year with positive growth. But if it goes longer than that – six months, one year – we will go into recession.” she said.

Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, had earlier said the state may witness up to 39,000 cases of coronavirus.

Abayomi at a briefing on Friday urged people to adhere to the social distancing advice of the state government to check the spread of the disease.

He said, “Our mathematical modelling shows that the worst-case scenario is that we may see up to 39,000 cases in Lagos, but if everyone practises good social distancing, the figure will be limited to 13,000.

“If we add social distancing to active contact tracing, then we will be able to bend the curve further. Looking at the same timeframe from the introduction of the index case, you can see that Lagos State is not seen anywhere near what Spain, Italy, and Iran are showing. So, at weeks two and three of our index case, we are flat; and at week four, we have 37 cases; while at the same fourth week, Italy, Iran, and Spain had more than 20,000 cases.”