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Copious literature exists on how COVID-19 is affecting the sexual and reproductive health of women and girls in the world. Not much is known about the case of Nigeria. Using secondary data in peer-reviewed and grey literature, as well as insights from web searches, this paper explores the impact of measures such as lockdown, closure of schools, travel bans, and social distancing on the sexual and reproductive health of women and girls in Nigeria. The impact varies between urban and rural dwellers amidst pre-existing patriarchal norms and severe health care deficiencies and limited access for people and worse for women and girls with needs. Decision-making about family planning, contraceptive use, safe delivery, antenatal care, prenatal care and treatment of victims of rape which have been mainly areas in which men’s power has been demonstrated in the past only got worse with pandemic-related lockdown and restrictions.

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The age-long significance of the West African Sub-region to global commerce or economy is not dwindling and, by all appearances, will not even in the distant future irrespective of shocks in the price of oil. Retrospectively, the region was key to European search for economic opportunities in both the pre-colonial and colonial eras as it provided the haven of resources needed for industrialization in Europe. A great number of slaves shipped from Africa to the New World were also taken from the region because of the advantage of huge oceanic freeway. Now, amidst threats of energy insecurity due to crisis in the Persian Gulf and increasing concern for securing reliable source of supply by oil importing countries, especially by the US, the Gulf of Guinea has come to the fore once more as a region with great potential for providing a significant part of the answer for emerging fears of global energy insecurity. This paper seeks to explain this role on the part of the Gulf Guinea in the context of external and domestic linkages to security and oil conflict in the region. The paper argues that quest for energy security and failure by oil importing countries to seek alternative energy sources breed insecurity for oil exporting countries. We suggest an explanation on how this operates, especially in relation to the mode of governance of the oil by national leaders, multilateral institutions and multinational oil companies in the case of Nigeria’s delta region.

At the minimum, democracy refers to a political system that guarantees opportunities for citizens to choose and replace their