The Implication of Coronavirus on Human and National Security in Nigeria

Abstract

The reconceptualization of security at the end of the Cold War in the 1980s, expanding it to encompass human security and, indeed, health security, emerged as a result of multiple interconnected factors. These factors challenged the state-centric notion of conventional security to enable a broader, comprehensive concept of security to emerge. This was because the challenges posed by pandemics such as acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), Lassa fever, tuberculosis, Ebola, and, recently, coronavirus globally have been conceptualized as threats to human and national securities. This paper aims to highlight the negative implications of the coronavirus on human and national security in Nigeria, as well as its growing effects on economic, social, and diplomatic relationships among countries globally. The emergence of the coronavirus in 2019 in China once again moved health from the periphery to core status in the nation's foreign policy. It argues that the menace has expanded the frontier and paradigm of security to include humanitarian, environmental, economic, gender, health, food securities, etc. It concludes that there is the need to rejig security architecture not only in Nigeria but globally to respond to the complexity and interrelatedness of both old and new security threats.