Are the northern and southern regions equally affected by the COVID-19 pandemic? An empirical evidence from Nigeria

The new coronavirus infection, being a current global fearful pandemic disease among humans, has spread all over hundreds of countries around the world and has greatly infected millions of people. While the spread of this disease continues among humans, the study aims at determining which part of Nigeria is more affected by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), as this would assist the national government and other international nongovernmental agencies to plan on the concentration patterns as to which region would require more helping hands in terms of fight against the pandemic disease. Nigeria is stratified into two: southern and northern regions. Data on confirmed cases are sourced from the official website of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control. These datasets, which cover the periods of February 29 and May 1, 2020 inclusive, are captured on a weekly basis and are grouped according to regional zones, i.e., southern and northern parts. The assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variances are tested via the use of Shapiro-Wilk and Bartlett's statistics. The two tests reveal no violation of any of the assumptions. Thereafter, the t-test is applied with a view to determine the region with a higher chance of being affected by COVID-19. Our results indicate that states in the south have a higher rate of confirmed cases of the pandemic infection than the states in the north. It is therefore concluded that the national government as well as other nongovernmental agencies should focus more on the fight against the pandemic disease in the southern states of Nigeria than in the northern states.