Dayo Sobowale
The ongoing pandemic has created an all pervading environment of fear in our world and Nigeria is not an exception. The pandemic has anyway left its social scars arising from the palliatives we have put in place to arrest its spread while making provisions for that spread in the expectation that it must kill more people before being satiated and abated or killed outright. My focus today is on the cost of our palliatives so far, as well as an appreciation for help from some quarters which hitherto have been notorious for giving help or loans with a repayment agenda that has been largely responsible for the economic impoverishment of borrower nations from the developing world, of which Nigeria is a major borrower and player.
When the Nigerian president lifted the lockdown on Ogun and Lagos states after 5 weeks some of us ventured out, but some stayed put with the attitude that the fear of the pandemic is the beginning of wisdom . Indeed there was a social media message that those who ventured out may not really see the end of the pandemic as those who stayed put would surely do. Any way those who ventured out saw an empty city and got very scared driving on deserted roads, bridges and high flyovers which suddenly looked longer and higher as the absence of the usually vibrant traffic created a loud, unnerving silence and presence that made one want to turn homewards rather than venturing out again. It was a really frightening experience.
On the other hand those who stayed home seemed afraid to face the outside world again . Some probably because they had made ample provision in terms of food and as such wanted the lockdown to continue ad infinitum. Some because they thought government should be forced or cajoled to feed people while the lockdown lasted or the pandemic is pervasive. A lady program anchor echoed this view loudly, albeit sarcastically, on a popular FM station recently.
In all these however agoraphobia, the fear of open spaces or the fear to come out of one’s habitation and meet crowds, has taken hold as the cost of the lock down in our midst. Of course those who came out observed the protocols of social distancing and face masks but at banks, markets and places where people wanted urgent services, these protocols were abandoned. Indeed the curfew was broken because of traffic congestion that was so unbelievably long such that street peddlers and hawkers were still selling water and food to commuters well after the 8pm curfew time limit. I really appreciate the appeal of the Police IG that the public should bear with the Police in enforcing the curfew. But then, the traffic and the bad roads made commuting long and tedious and that made the curfew difficult if not impossible to observe for commuters. That made it even more frustrating for the police to enforce the curfew unless they wanted to force citizens to sleep on the roads in the face of mostly impassable roads on the major routes of daily travels in Lagos.
Aside from the hangover of agoraphobia from the lockdowns, I want to look at some remedies that have arisen this week as proposed and real solutions to this pandemic. The first is the 3bn dollars IMF loan repayable over 5 years and already disbursed in naira equivalent to the CBN. The second is the view point of the Bauchi State Governor Senator Bala Mohammed who tested positive and got revived with drugs normally used for fever and infection and is confident that such a solution could be used in attacking the virus which we are told for now has no cure. The third is the view by the Minister of health Dr Osagie Ehanire that proposed traditional solutions seem to want to make guinea pigs of human beings and such proposals are off the table of proposed solutions to the virus.
We go back to the IMF loan of 3.4bn dollars loan for assistance to support health care sector , protect jobs and businesses. The loan is a Rapid Finance Instrument and Nigeria is expected to pay back in 3- 5 years. This is an emergency loan based on the pandemic. It has no basis in viability which is the capacity to repay and it is as such a compassionate loan but repayable in a specific period all the same. For once I will not quarrel with us taking this loan as we need it because our revenue has plummeted because of the fall in oil prices arising from the heady dispute between Saudi Arabia and Russia. We are not alone in this predicament because the oil giants in the mighty US are suffering mightily too. It showed the fragility and foolishness of our depending totally on oil as our mono industry and major source of revenue. More importantly I think that those who manage the World Bank and IMF nowadays are different from those who managed them before when they used harsh repayment conditions for the loans to stifle the growth and economic development of borrower nations . This approach created failed states like Somalia and we were lucky to escape. Or have we?
The present IMF CEO Kristalina Georgieva was an Acting World Bank MD and a EU top finance officer before and has brought to this IMF unusual financial empathy and concern for developing nations. This approach was created in the World Bank, by the appointment during the Obama era of Jim Yong Kim as the World Bank MD from 2012 to 2019. Jim Yong Kim is an Asian American physician and Anthropologist who worked to alleviate global poverty during his time at the World Bank where he served two five year terms before going on to Infrastructure Development. Today he is back helping some states in the US to fight the pandemic which he thinks should be fixed at its base of spread like the epidemiologist John Snow stopped the spread of cholera in London in 1854 by locating a pump from where people fetched water and removing the lock of the pump to stop the spread of cholera then. Jim Yong Kim has helped with funds from the state of Massachussets governor in the US to track and trace contacts in the state to nip in the bud, the spread of the pandemic which he believed should be stopped instead of people having to live with it as some of us have advocated.
It is my belief that the IMF loan is well intentioned and almost charitable. They have put in place and we have agreed monitoring, transparency and accountability regimes on disbursement and repayment schedule. The onus is on us as a people and government to ensure that we adhere to making use of the loan for the purpose for which it is meant in such a way that we do not renege on repayment arrangements because our honor and prestige as a nation are at stake. Without really shouting wolf on the pandemic, the IMF Has come to our aid. We should ensure that we do not end up like the boy who shouted wolf when there was none and rued tragically, the day that the wolf showed up unexpectedly and there was no savior around.
We now look at the Bauchi Governor’s survival of the pandemic and his giving glory to God while advising that what medicine had cured him could be used by people with the virus.
It is a bold and patriotic view and the governor’s advice should be heeded by those in charge of the pandemic strategy .and not treated with levity, derision or contempt because it is empirical, pragmatic and based on experience. It is quite different from the condemnation of the traditionalist approach which the Minister of Health derided for lack of laboratory tests. But even then, the Minister’s stance is arrogant because he is a doctor and showed total disrespect for native intelligence and originality in health practice. This was the sort of attitude European authorities had towards Chinese and Indian medicine for long, till now, when herbs from these two formerly underdog nations, are now the leading panacea for disease and ailments in Europe and the world at large. The Minister is well advised to keep an open mind on traditional medicine in the pursuit of a cure for this pandemic. Once again, from the fury of this pandemic Good Lord Deliver us. Amen.
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