COVID-19 exposes the many fault lines of contemporary Nigeria
The headlines are scary, as COVID-19, the worst global public health emergency in a century, reaps grim harvests in lives; aside from flaring hospitalizations, and near-death tales from lucky survivors.
Yet, a section of the population regales in proud denials, the most nettling being Yahya Bello, the tragi-comic Kogi governor, who has declared his enclave free of COVID-19, while the surrounding states — all 10 of them, including the Federal Capital Territory, into which Kogi is a vibrant gateway — reel from the pandemic.
To be sure, such irrational responses are hardly a Nigerian monopoly. Former US President Donald Trump, in a failed re-election bid, used the fear-no-COVID whoop to game his Make America Great Again (MAGA) fanatics, even if such unprotected rallies would become “super-spreaders”, to borrow that American coinage. Lobbies in Europe and Asia have also trooped out to declare themselves COVID-fatigued; and pushed their democratic right to freedom that leads to putative death, than restraint, that saves lives.
Still, the COVID-19 bedlam has only exposed deep Nigerian fault lines: from political brinksmanship to fatalism; reckless faith posturing that endangers the flock, to a general culture of laxity, that brags denial is powerful antidote to a killer-pandemic. Add the seeming lack of appetite by authorities to enforce non-pharmaceutical COVID-19 guidelines and you can imagine what bumpy pandemic ride Nigerians embark upon!
Still, shrill news headlines are constant reminders the peril is real. Samples: PTF: COVID-19 killed 405 Nigerians in two months; 75 doctors infected in one week; FG declares Kogi no-go area; Court shuts FCT market, UTC and plazas for violation of COVID-19 protocols; Panic in NYSC camp headquarters, camps, as resident officer dies of COVID-19.
But pray, what was the Kogi government’s reaction to its federal health blacklist, after Governor Bello’s curious sanctification of Kogi as COVID-free; and the health authorities’ allegation that Kogi is suppressing COVID-19 tests just to sustain its governor’s moonlight tales? That the Kogi COVID advisory was driving investors from the state! What chutzpah!
Still, since Nigeria is a democracy and a federation, and no one can bark down a central command on the governor and his aides, how best to manage such dangerous gubernatorial rascality remains moral suasion. Perhaps then, President Muhammadu Buhari, who the governor holds in high esteem, should privately help to tether Bello to some reason? Nigerians, particularly Kogi natives and residents, would be better for it!
But the Nigerian COVID-19 management challenge — and again, the headlines are ample gauge — is beyond a grating, annoying and illogical governor, though the cost of mixed messaging, from such pivotal public source, is huge.
Nevertheless, what do you make of corporates — formal departmental stores, run by famed multinationals — carrying on business, with pre-COVID-19 protocols? Are they putting the profit motive before the wellness of same patrons that buy their goods and services, and boost their bottom line?
And the local FCT market a court shut down, for flouting COVID-19 safety protocols? Do these common folks think the pandemic targets only the rich and the mighty? Despite all the blitz on coronavirus spread, do they still think the air the masses inhale is different from that of the elite?
Have some of them not lost kith-and-kin to the pandemic, even if fatalism could explain away such loses to witches and wizard, or some malevolent stepmom who undid a cocky and hated step kid? Perhaps, the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 should mandate the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to shock these folks with data on COVID-19 casualties in their communities. Maybe such shock therapy would jerk them awake!
The near-contempt with which the so-called masses hold the COVID-19 threat is clear. You could almost count, on Lagos streets, those wearing nose masks, or respecting social distancing, or regularly washing their hands or shunning huge crowds! Yet Lagos, despite Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s masterful and activist handling of the pandemic, is vortex of the pandemic.
Which is why President Buhari signing the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Health Protection Regulations 2021 makes eminent sense. The new law is the warehousing and codification of all non-pharmaceutical safety measures to manage COVID-19: masking up, social distancing, regular hand washing, crowd curtailment, et al. Breaching the new code, or sabotaging COVID-19 control measures, would attract six months in jail, or fine, or both — measures avidly welcomed by the medical community.
The code also directs security and transport regulatory agencies — the Police, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Federal Road Safety Corps, Nigeria Immigration Service, Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria — to strictly enforce the law.
That is a good, noble and patriotic charge. The enforcement agencies should therefore seize the new regulations as wake-up call to grow new appetite for strict enforcement. Wild Nigerians, risking the lives of COVID regulations-complying others, should get due punishment under the law.
But beyond non-pharmaceutical activism, the real game-changer would appear mass accessibility to vaccines, by the Nigerian populace. Unfortunately, no thanks to vaccine nationalism and regionalism, that has seized America and Europe, that access isn’t exactly a walk in the park.
Vaccine nationalism and regionalism — why not? Nations whose scientists burn their brains, and who invest humongous cash to get COVID-19 vaccines in record time, earn the right to be at the head of the vaccine table.
That is an umpteenth lesson, yet again, on why Nigeria and other African countries must prioritize scientific research; and build local capacity to respond, in times of global emergencies, as promptly as Western scientists. On this score, neither Russia nor China would grouse about vaccine nationalism. Their own scientists have done the needful.
Still, these same vaccine trail-blazing nations, had pushed globalization as regnant holy writ. Their nationals too served as earliest vectors for COVID-19 global spread (the index case in Nigeria was via an Italian). So they have moral responsibility to ensure fair and equitable global access of COVID-19 vaccines. But beyond moral responsibility, this is trite: a globe, so, so interlinked, is less safe for everyone, without COVID-19 vaccines penetrating everywhere.
So, as the Nigerian government pulls all stops to curtail COVID-19 spread, by enforcing all non-pharmaceutical safety measures, jabbing the vaccines in every Nigerian arm must be fundamental policy. It’s good news that arrangements are already in place for some 57 million doses, though in batched delivery. But as experience has shown in the United States, Brazil, United Kingdom and the European Union (EU), vaccine availability is only the opening salvo. The tougher combat is priming logistics to ensure a jab in people’s arms.
Nigeria must rev up the logistics to give every Nigerian that jab. It could well be a race against time, as China has shown. While the world is still hobbled by what Trump starkly called the “China virus” (because it came from Wuhan, China), China has practically moved on. Nigeria can’t afford any delay to join the post-COVID-19 global economy.
