…Nigeria in a hole, still digging
By Steve Nwosu
Let me start by making two confessions. The first is that, like most middle-age and elderly people, I also have underlying ailments. Yes, those ailments believed to have the capacity to compromise one’s immunity and more easily predispose one to other opportunistic infections – like Covid-19.
Now, some of the many symptoms of my ailments include burning sensation in the tummy, poor appetite, general body heat that usually begins at the lower back, and gradually courses through the entire body, a slight fever now and then, occasional body pain, banging headache, occasional cold, cough and catarrh (CCC).
“I have lived with all for at least, seven years now. I have coughed, sneezed, stooled, and farted with reckless abandon. And in all these years, the worst I’ve ever received is occasional insults (for pungent-smelling farts), ‘bless you’ ( for a sneeze), and ‘easy’ or ‘sorry’ (for persistent coughing).
But all that has now changed. In these days of Corona, each and every of those symptoms automatically sets off an alarm bell, not only in my brain, but in the brains of those around me.
Fear immediately grips me with every cough (productive or otherwise): Has the virus finally got me? With every slight spike in temperature, you’re instantly torn between waiting and observing it for a while longer, and picking up the phone and calling the NCDC.
That is even if one is not ‘blessed’ with some of those pesky neighbours who would have already called the hotline of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). Before you know what hit you, you’d be riding in the back of an ambulance, on your way to some government isolation centre.
Even in my own estate, one resident almost turned a pariah, for no other reason that he recently returned from Europe. Other residents covertly, and overtly, threatened him to either remain in his apartment or have them call the authorities on him. That’s how serious things presently are.
The second confession I have to make is that, as the world battles to bring this rampaging Corona Virus pandemic under control, and despite all the medical advice to the contrary, I believe in the efficacy of many of the local herbal remedies now flying all over social media.
I have been religiously taking warm water, green tea, ginger tea, Moringa tea and all. I’ll add lemon grass if I see. I believe ginger will count for something in one’s overall wellbeing, even if it does not mortally dent Covid-19. The same goes for honey, lime, herbal steaming/sauna, onions, fruits, vegetables and all. Like the presidential taskforce against the disease has told us, the responsibility for keeping the virus at bay lies primarily with the individual.
And I’m taking responsibility for not only my health, but the health of my wife and kids. This is more so against the backdrop of the fact that, at best, we barely have capacity to test more than 200 persons per day in Nigeria. Compare that to the United Kingdom which, as at last week, was capable of testing over 10,000 person per day, and was targeting to up that capacity to 25,000 per day by the end of this week.
Considering that even privileged state governors and other top politicians have to wait for as much as 72 hours to get the result of their blood samples, it is almost suicidal that anyone would completely put all his chances of surviving Corona in the hands of a system that can hardly protect itself. Now, don’t go thinking it’s a Nigerian thing alone.
No. -The same situation played out in China, and it is now playing out in the US, UK, Spain, Italy, South Africa and just about every other country. Corona humbled some and exposed others.
The only thing that is typically Nigerian in all this is the way we’re going about the Corona war. Like is typical with clueless money-miss-road people, we are simply throwing money, and more money, at the problem – with little, by way of strategy, that can stand the test of time.
Of course, we long lost the opportunity to be proactive about Covid-19. What we’re now doing are reactionary knee-jerk actions, and mobilizing an intimidating financial war chest that we have no clue of what to do with.
Of course, I’m super impressed by the way Nigerians – both individuals and corporate entities, have risen to the challenge of the Covid-19 pandemic, shelling out cash and materials in support of the federal government efforts. As at the last count on Monday, we had already crossed the N100-billion mark in donations.
However, just as we are now gradually being left to drink our crude oil by the rest of the world, following the corona-induced collapse of the global economy, very soon too, we would be left to literally chew the cash from our Covid-19 Naira rain.
For starters, many countries are putting checks on their export of medicines and other materials needed to battle Covid-19, preferring to channel their stock to domestic use – to battle the pandemic in their own countries. Every country is mobilizing pharmaceutical, and related, companies to increase production to meet local needs.
Nobody, except probably China, is presently disposed to exporting. So, where exactly are we hoping to buy from? What happened to our own drug manufacturers? We blindly focused on raw crude oil and lazily watched, or forced our pharmaceuticals and other manufacturers go under and close shop. We have no strategic drug reserve.
We have little food reserve to even see us through a whole month of lockdown. And the crude oil? It is completely useless to us because we can’t refine it. Yet, we have only a scanty strategy fuel reserve. A whole month of no importation could lead to unimaginable energy crises. The summary? We’re in deep sh*t!
Although the common knowledge is that the first step to take, when you’re in a hole, is to stop digging, we seem to be digging even deeper. We are now setting up committee after committee. One way to avoid doing anything, in the face of a challenge, is to set up committees.
Very soon, we’ll begin hear disagreements over who should disburse what and how. Then, the fight would start. Contracts would be awarded, letters of credit would be opened, LPOs would be dished out, the money would disappear. And, if the rest of the world does not come to our rescue, Lagos State government would become overwhelmed. And corona would rage on.
Rather than battle the pandemic, many of our leaders are busy trying to score political points. PDP is refusing the honest effort the APC government of President Buhari is making in battling the scurge, while the APC is eager to prove that it has handled the situation better than the PDP government of Goodluck Jonathan did with the Ebola virus case.
While the opposition was eager to have a good laugh at how PMB would fumble with addressing Nigerians on a near-daily basis, the ruling party was more concerned shielding its president from possible public ridicule than any presidential reassurance for Nigerians in desperate search for leadership in these trying times. Everything has been politicized.
As I write this piece, I have sitting beside me, a tiny bottle of hand sanitizer of no more than 20ml. On a good day, if this were to be ever sold, it wouldn’t be more than N20. Even with the ongoing price gouging by marketers, anybody offering it for more than N50 deserves to be locked in jail and the keys thrown away.
But that sanitizer is what was distributed by a workers union in Lagos, with the photograph of its chairman boldly printed on it. The wording of the message clear monument to what we locally describe as eye-service. Undeniably, the cost of printing the ‘campaign message’ on the little bottle is clearly higher than the value of its content.
And then the union organized a huge rally, moving from market to market, distributing the disgraceful sanitizers. Only God knows how much injury the campaign would have inflicted on the purse of the union. Shameless!
But that’s not all of it. I’ve also seen viral videos, and photos, of different government officials sharing ‘relief materials’ to families in their constituencies. While some shared biscuits, others shared a few packets of noodles, while yet others shared a loaf of bread per benefiting family.
That, at best, takes care of unbalanced meal – in a day that should have three square meals. Meanwhile, we’re in for a two-week lockdown, at the first instance. The federal government, meanwhile, is still setting up committees to work out the modalities for sharing its own relief to residents of satellite towns of the locked down states and city.
So, are we fighting Covid-19? Or are we just waiting and hoping that by some miracle, the pandemic would just blow away? I pray it does blow away. I pray that, like Ebola, Monkey pox and others before it, this cup will pass over us.
However, I hope that this globally humbling Covid-19 experience would serve as a wake- up call to take a more honest look at not only our local health infrastructure, but our one-track economy. To understand that even while government and its functionaries squander the revenue from our oil and gas deposits, they must remember that there would come a time, like now, when all the crude oil in the world cannot help us.
A time when we would have to rely on our local manufacturing capacities to survive. That is why visionary leaders invest in infrastructure, health, research, education and manpower development.
IT IS WELL WITH NIGERIA
