Highlights The year 2020 was ushered in with a historical novel virus (COVID-19) pandemic in a manner that the world has never witnessed before. We employ the state of the art analysis to explicate the implications of the lockdown lifting in Nigeria using both analytical and descriptive statistics. Of the three episodes of COVID-19 in Nigeria, the easing up phases witness the highest cases of the virus with the addition of over 13,000 in just 41 days. Every day of the easing phase of the lockdown has witnessed an increasing number of cases.

The study examines the extent to which lockdown measures impact on COVID-19 confirmed cases in Nigeria. Six indicators of lockdown entailing retail and recreation, grocery and pharmacy, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential, are considered. The empirical evidence is anchored on the negative binomial regression estimator, due to the count nature of the dataset on the daily cases of the virus. The study established the key following findings: First, retail and recreation, grocery and pharmacy, parks, transit stations, and workplaces are statistically significant and negatively signed as relevant predictors of the virus. Second, the impact of residential is positive and statistically significant at the conventional level. Lastly, the results are robust to an alternative estimator of Poisson Regression. The emanated policy message centres on the need to direct efforts toward ensuring total compliance to the lockdown rules as it holds the key to keeping the virus under check.

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