The Nigerian Health Care system is structured along the country’s tiers of government. Consequently, public health emergencies response starts from the primary through the secondary to the tertiary health level. Evaluating Nigerian pre-COVID health system is important in understanding the management of the COVID 19 outbreak. The first case of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) was in Wuhan, China December 2019. The disease spread from Wuhan across China and later spread around the world causing a global emergency. In Nigeria, the first index case was recorded on 27th February 2020. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID 19 as a Pandemic disease on 11th March 2020. This study evaluates the pre-COVID19 Nigerian health system and its readiness towards handling COVID-19 health emergency. The research adopted qualitative techniques to analyse documentary evidence and then synthesised it with empirical data. The study observed that, Nigeria Health System lacks the capacity to manage the COVID-19 health emergency and its long time impacts. Thus, this study further makes recommendations on better preparations and management of highly infectious diseases such as COVID-19 in the future.
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