Nigeria does not have the resources to susatin a prolonged lockdown. The economic situation is dire, the government launched an agressive taxation policy

to attempt to remedy this, bumping up VAT by 50% from 5% to 7.5% before Covid-19 came into the picture. Now,

Covid-19 has made things worse. oil prices have dipped to the lowest levels recorded in 18years, trading at less than $20 a barrel, a huge 89% loss in value from the pre-lockdown period.
For an economy hugely dependent on oil this is worisome

The current lockdown sitution is like holding your breath underwater to avoid sharks circling above. Eventually, the need to breathe will overwhelm the fear of the sharks. It would have been better if we'd shut our borders earlier and this thing never made it's way into our

shores.
However, we're long past finger pointing.
Obviosly, this means more foreign debt incurred post Corona. The picture isnt good. We cant grind down economic activities indefinitely like the First
world countries are doing. We need to invest in smarter solutions to

combat this thing. We need to look at how to re-structure events which cause crowds to gather.
Avenues where people come in mingle should be re-organized to minimize contact to the bearest minimum.

A major cause for crowd, is ATMs/Banks where people go to perform transactions.

data shows that daily, about 2.5million transactions are performed using either banks/ATMs. Since banks have been closed, that number has emigrated to ATMs. There are exactly 17,518 ATms in Nigeria today, didvide that by 2.5million, and you have an average of one ATM 142 people

This means that using an ATM is equivalent to interacting with 150 other people. Now people who interact with these ATM's dont just stop there, they
typically hop into busses/keke to commute to-and from the atm spot. This creates four degrees of exposure which are.

1. You board a bus/keke there
2. You wait on a queue
3. You use press the same buttons/ share writing materials
4. You board another bus going back.

To this end, i have developed technology which promises enforced social isolation for who need to perform ATM-related operations. The underlying principle of my technological solution is quite simple. -

Disperse crowds at ATMs by connecting them to a mobile money agent nearby, within trekkable distance.

One thing we can all agree on is that nobody likes waiting on ATM lines, but they're forced to do this because they're not aware that there is a mobile money
agent close to them.
I, with help from Chibueze @transcendence09 who facilitated the design,

have built an app - which directs people to the nearest available mobile money agent within trekkable distance. Here's how the app helps fight covid-19 or Coronavirus.

1. People who use the app do not need to enter buses and mingle with the larger population
2. Crowds at banks and ATMs are significantly reduced
3. Mobile money agents keep record of every customer they serve, which is ideal in contact tracing scenarios

4. Mobile money agents can be used to sensitize the public on covid-19 safety measures, especially in areas sandboxed from cable news due to poor electricity.

It's important to note that this was built on personal funds, although ideally it

should have been sponsored by an agency due to the national significance. This app was built in 8 days - between March 24th, and 1st of April (finished 20 days ago ).

Here's how the app looks . Emphasis was placed on usability and simplicity.

The app is not yet live on the app store either on android or ios because there are no agents registered on it. It didnt make sense to release the app without any agents in it.

To this end, 6 companies operating in the mobile money space have been contacted, to integrate their agents into this application.

It is disheartening to report that none have replied to any mails sent to them soliciting access to their agent network

I would like to call on agencies, bodies, parties interested in containing covid-19 and shunting the economic hemorrhage to come in and assist.