Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has warned that the crowded scenes on Monday could result in more persons contracting coronavirus and lead to another lockdown.

“Initial reports are not too pleasing across the country,” Director-General of the NCDC, Chikwe Ihekweazu, said on the lockdown compliance at the Presidential Task Force briefing on COVID-19 on Monday

“Yes, we might have a few extra transmission today and tomorrow, but what we don’t want is an explosion of new infections.

“If we do have that new explosion, there would be almost no choice for the leadership of the country than to ask everybody to go back into our homes.”

A month lockdown in Lagos, Ogun and Abuja were eased on Monday, but crowds clustered at banks and in public transport to defy the government’s orders of social distancing.

Ihekweazu stated it was expected that the government’s guidelines will be flouted but said there is an urgent need for compliance.

“Yes, we knew today would be a problem,” he said. “Everybody here knew today would be a problem because for the first time people were let out of their homes.

“But now that we have seen the sunlight again, the challenge for us as a society is how do we now organise ourselves to mitigate this risk, to limit transmission.

Nigeria recorded its highest single-day infection rate of COVID-19 on Monday with a total of 245 new cases confirmed by the NCDC.

Seventy-three of the new cases were recorded in the country’s commercial capital Lagos.

The total number of infections in the country stands at 2,802 on Tuesday, including 93 deaths and 417 recoveries.