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The Influence of Islamic Clerics on the Acceptance and Response of COVID-19 Prevention Protocols in Northeast Nigeria

COVID-19 is the recent global pandemic that affected all facets of human endeavour worldwide. Pandemics are usually heralded with allegations and perception of conspiracies which is associated with culture and environment. In Nigeria, especially, the Northeast, the pandemic was reluctantly welcomed owing to perception and culture, which created the fear of rapid spread because protocols were breached. In this regard, religious clerics played an instrumental role in influencing people to accept and respond to the prevention protocols. This study investigated the role played by Islamic clerics in making people believe in the pandemic and accept and respond positively to preventing it through adopting the set protocols. The study utilised both primary and secondary sources. The primary sources included a survey in the area of study, in-depth personal expert interviews, and participant observation, while the secondary sources consisted of documented materials. The assembled data were discussed and interpreted using manual SPSS for the survey, where tables were designed for simple percentage analysis, content analysis for the in-depth interview, and participant observation. The study reports that Islamic clerics played a significant role in persuading people to accept COVID-19 as a pandemic and to adopt prevention protocols initially after hesitation. The clerics succeeded in convincing the public to accept the prevention protocols using religious injunctions. The study, therefore, recommends, among several others, that Islamic clerics and other religious leaders need to be integrated into critical issues of public interest and public-agenda setting to avoid mutual suspicion, hostilities, and practices that will negatively affect the wellbeing of the populace.