COVID-19: You and many others are asking these same questions… will this end in a Nigerian apocalypse?

BY JUDE ‘FERANMI

Does it look like we have a public health emergency in Nigeria today? Do you think that with the increasing numbers of cases that NCDC continues to publish as confirmed cases, there is a chance we will be out of the woods soon? Does the extent to which there is a mistrust of the government from citizens give any hopes that we are collectively working to defeat this viral disease as a people?These questions are the questions that anyone interested in the future of our country will be asking today.

When President Buhari announced the lifting of the lockdown on the 4th of May, there was no other detailed information that was relevant to what happens next or how we plan to defeat the coronavirus as a nation, asides waiting and hoping. If we rely on the numbers, the lockdown did not seem to have achieved anything significant. There are more cases announced today after the 34 days lockdown than there was before the lockdown was announced. We have not been able to increase testing capacity to the extent of doing half of what Ghana did before they decided as a country to lift the lockdown.

Announcing the lockdown itself as a method for ‘flattening the curve’ as we are now fond of calling it was a decision that was not evidence based in any way, nor did it take into consideration the character of the Nigerian people. Countries were locking down their citizens to stay at home, so we also did. At the end of that exercise, we have seen that the method does not work. Even the World Health Organisation has said it is difficult to ask poor countries like Nigeria to lock down their citizens with a stay at home policy.

At the beginning of this crisis and through an op-ed, I had called on the government both at the national assembly and the federal executive council to begin the process of declaring a state of emergency in the country and most importantly focus on building a healthcare industry that can serve the purposes of managing this crisis but benefitting the country in the long run. A state of emergency has yet to be declared by the President nationally and asides the announced efforts of the Central Bank of Nigeria to make funding available for healthcare focused companies, nothing is yet to materialize.

The immediate ‘cure’ for this coronavirus pandemic in poor countries like Nigeria and the global south, is not a vaccine nor an existing antiviral drug like Remdesivir that costs thousands of dollars for just one patient. The ‘immediate’ cure for this pandemic is ORDER.

We do not have the health infrastructure to carry out research that will produce a vaccine. In the instant that a vaccine is produced which is still about 12 months away according to experts, we can expect that rich countries will get the first set of vaccines for their population first before saving poor countries. If we expect to solve this problem the same way that we have been approaching all our problems so far, we will have an insanely high number of dead people on our hands by the end of the year. We must innovate around this problem and our thinking must change.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the government must now immediately declare a state of emergency in the entire country and begin to channel a large chunk of resources towards an healthcare industry both for the private sector and the public sector.

Firstly, we cannot innovate around medicines, or vaccines or machines – we will need lots of time for research and lots of money to do this, which we do not have the luxury of right now. What we must now do is innovate around the processes by which our society is ordered. This is why a nationwide state of emergency is needed. Unless we can enforce a re-ordering of how we do the basic things – how we move around, whether people wear masks or not, how stalls are arranged in markets, the proximity of people in gatherings, the number of passengers in public transports – we will count our dead bodies.

Secondly, there is a need and an opportunity to build a healthcare industry that is capable of managing not just the increasing cases that we can unfailingly expect but one we can also benefit from after this pandemic. The COVID Organics being used in Madagascar to manage patients as effectively as it is would probably not have passed the scientific process in more developed countries or at least in the time it took for the President of the country to announce it as a solution, but it works! The people of Madagascar are the better for it and the World Health Organisation has now called for a clinical trial for the syrup’s use in managing the viral disease globally. We need to invest in companies that can provide solutions right now.

At the beginning of this global pandemic, there were rumours about the resistance of Africans to this strain of the virus because the virus refused to spread to Africa. Some even joked that it was payback time for the colonial masters. We now know that the African American is twice as likely to contract the virus than any other race in the U.S.A. When I said ‘we will count our dead bodies’ in an earlier paragraph, some or maybe even most will respond to the comment by saying ‘God Forbid’ or ‘This prophecy of doom will not come to pass either in Jesus’ name or Insha Allah. It is my hope that while we are responding to this as part of our mannerisms which are sometimes subconscious, those mannerism-esque responses do not dictate our public policy. If it does, we will regret it.

In re-ordering our society in a manner that ‘flattens the curve’, the civil society must increase its intensity and capacity to monitor and put in check the likely excesses of the military and the law enforcers. The laws that must guide this re-ordering of our society must also be clear with no excessive discretionary powers in the hands of any elected or appointed officers. What must be clear however is that our people will die more from a lack of order than from a lack of a cure.

Finally, the decisions that will need to be made in times like this require not just active leadership but inspirational leadership. We will need to ask our people to change the way that they live and carry out their normal lives – not just the middle class Nigerians who have television sets in their houses to watch the President’s speeches when he gives them, but also the suya seller in Doguwa in Kano and the taxi driver in Irepodun in Osun and the bus conductor in Obalende in Lagos and the single mother of three who sells vegetables in Esit Eket in Akwa Ibom. Whether we have a leadership that can inspire a nation to rise up to this occasion of leadership can be a debate. What is not a debate however is if this is a life or death situation. It is!

May God grant our leaders wisdom and bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

‘Feranmi is the Convener of Raising New Voices Initiative and can be reached at [email protected]