Article title: COVID-19 response and social work education in Nigeria: matters arising
Author: Chinyere Edith Onalu, Ngozi Eucharia Chukwu and Uzoma Odera Okoye
Journal: Social Work Education
DOI: 10.1080/02615479.2020.1825663
When the above article was first published online, the revisions made by the author were not incorporated, the changes are listed below:
Four more paragraphs are inserted on the Introduction section, and can be found below:
In Nigeria, the Nigeria Education in Emergency Working Group [NEEWG] (2020) revealed that the first case of coronavirus disease was on the 27th of February 2020 in Lagos State. Ever since then, the situation has continued to worsen with more cases occurring, regardless of measures initiated by the federal and state government to combat the virus and return to normalcy. As at August 8, 2020, there were 45,687 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Nigeria with 32,637 discharges and 936 deaths (Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), 2020; Worldometre, 2020).
To prevent further spread of the virus, President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 on 9 March 2020 to coordinate and oversee Nigeria’s intergovernmental multi-sectoral efforts to curb the spread and mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria (2020 Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, 2020). Also, there is the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control [NCDC] who were at the forefront of providing information about the virus and what preventive measures members of the public were required to take (Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), 2020).
Also recognizing the scope of the country’s problem and the capacity of federal and state governments to respond adequately, the private sector formed a coalition to leverage their resources to support the government’s response to the pandemic. That led to the establishment of a 110-bed isolation center in Lagos and the provision of palliatives during the lockdown to many Nigerians (Eribo, 2020). In addition to local philanthropic donations, there were also several in-kind and cash donations made to the Nigerian government from multilateral aid agencies, including the EU and the UN.
Various Nigerian religious leaders were also very supportive of the lockdown as both the Nigerian Christian Association (CAN) and the Nigerian Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) supported the lockdowns by the government and collaborated with certain local and state governments to disseminate correct information and encourage compliance. Several state governors instituted their own lockdowns and also decided to unanimously prohibit interstate travel for two weeks even after the four weeks’ lockdown by the federal government (Campbell and McCaslin, 2020). Generally, one can conclude that Nigerians were united in their actions against the COVID-19 pandemic and the country is yet to officially record one thousand deaths as at the end of July 2020.
The following sentence in the introduction was not updated: “For instance, in Nigeria, social workers were asked to go home and the few on the ground had little or nothing to do in terms of intervention and response unlike social workers in China, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, United Kingdom and so many others who were part of the COVID-19 interventions and response teams (Cui, 2020; Dominelli, 2020; Hyslop, 2020; IFSW, 2020; Pengli, 2020; Scarnera, 2020; Zhang et al., 2020).”
The corrected sentence should be as follows: For instance, in Nigeria, all workers on grade level 12 and below were asked to go home along with social workers on similar grade levels (Yakubu, 2020). The few social workers on the ground had little or nothing to do in terms of intervention and response unlike social workers in China, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, United Kingdom and so many others who were part of the COVID-19 interventions and response teams (Cui, 2020; Dominelli, 2020; Hysop, 2020; IFSW, 2020; Pengli, 2020; Scarnera, 2020; Zhang et al, 2020).
The Method section is also updated as follows:
Participants
Eight social workers who work in health and welfare agencies were purposively and conveniently selected for the study. The criteria for selection is that they were all former students of the Department of Social Work, University of Nigeria, Nsukka who were trained using a similar curriculum and they have worked for at least three years post-graduation, and are willing to participate in the study. The rationale behind the use of the staff of health and welfare agencies only is because of their expected engagement with COVID-19 interventions.
Material and procedure
The instrument was unstructured interview made up of eight unstructured questions that were meant to tease out the objective of the study. These questions were developed by the researchers jointly. Telephone interviews were adopted as the method for collecting data as a result of the lockdown and travel restrictions after the faculty research board approved the instrument and proposal. Only one of the researchers conducted the interviews. During the interviews, Android phone with the call-recording feature was used. The study proposal and instrument went through the normal faculty research committee and given the go-ahead. Also the respondent’s consent were sought before the interviews were recorded. Respondents’ consent was obtained before recording commenced. Respondents were assured that their identities and that of their agencies will be protected. The interviews lasted between 30 to 45 minutes and were conducted at the convenience of the respondents only.
Data Analysis
In line with phenomenology in qualitative research design, thematic categories were then generated after responses were carefully transcribed and read (Creswell, 2013). The transcribed data was then entered into MS Word Excel spreadsheet under several themes/subheadings developed from the transcripts. At completion, the several data entry sheets were reviewed internally to ensure that responses were well classified before they were harmonized and categorised in three major themes: involvement in COVID-19 interventions, reasons for non-involvement and social work curriculum and COVID-19 interventions.
On the Result section, a new sub-section “Sociodemographic characteristics of respondents” is added as follows:
Sociodemographic characteristics of respondents
shows that out of the 8 social workers that participated, we have an equal number of respondents in health and social welfare facilities spread across five states though with only three males. The youngest respondent is 29 years while the oldest is 48 years. Four of the respondents have worked for ten years and above. Only two respondents belong to the grade level (Grade 13) that was mandated to come to work while the rest were required to stay at home.
Table 1. Socio-demographic characteristics of participants (N=8)
The Discussion section is also updated as follows:
“On the issue of the roles they played in the fight against COVID-19, some of the participants stated that they did not play any role. Few social workers employed in the facilities under study told us they were among the staff that were required to stay home during the lockdown and some noted that they were quite relieved to go as they felt that their services were not needed. Also, those on grade level 13 and above who remained at work reported that they were not involved in any of the COVID-19 interventions rather they were involved in their normal office routine. Some stated that they never really thought of how they could fit in the intervention programmes against the pandemic.”
“On what could be done for social workers to participate actively in the intervention against pandemics, respondents noted the need to mainstream and infuse courses on public health and disaster management across the whole social work curriculum and also make fieldwork practicum more action-oriented. This is important for schools of social work to consider when opportunities arise for curriculum revision. To ensure effective participation on issues concerning public health and disaster management, there may be a need also for student social workers to engage in active and experiential learning activities where they are challenged to deal with the intricacies of real-life situations (Cooper & Briggs, 2014; Rowland, 2013). By so doing, students will develop an appreciation of, and learn to deal with, the uncertainties, barriers, and moral problems that exist and can better respond to situations where there may not be a ‘best way’ to continue. They will also be well equipped with how to navigate all sectors of government including how to deal with politicians as this was reported by some of the respondents to be a problem.”
In the Reference section, the following references has been added:
Campbell, J. & McCaslin, J. (2020). How Nigeria has responded to COVID-19 so far. COVID-19. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/blog/how- nigeria-has-responded-covid-19-so-far.
Creswell, J. W. (2013). Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among the five approaches. SAGE Publications, Inc, Thousand Oaks, California.
Eribo, S. (2020). In Nigeria, philanthropy’s COVID-19 response raises questions. Alliance magazine. https://www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/nigeria-philanthropy-covid-19-response-raises-questions/
NCDC (2020). COVID-19 Nigeria. Retrieved from https://covid19.ncdc.gov.ng/
Worldometre (2020). Coronavirus updates. Retrieved from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/nigeria/
Yakubu, D. (2020). COVID-19: FG urges civil servants to work from home. Vanguard, Retrieved from https://www.vanguardngr.com/2020/03/covid-19-fg-urges-civil-servants-to-work-from-home/
The online version of this article has been corrected.