Festus Eriye
The total number of confirmed coronavirus infections in Nigeria is within touching distance of 5,000 with fatalities just over 150. Compared to a staggering 1,390,000 cases and 82,000 deaths in the US, you may be forgiven for thinking we don’t have a problem.
But with just a little over 27,000 tests conducted, this is far from the true picture of what we are contending with.
Those who take the threat seriously understand that with an infectious disease, the potential for explosive growth is just one indiscretion away.
Last weekend, Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo told his countrymen how one person at a fish processing plant in the port city of Tema infected 533 of his co-workers!
From the early days when the index case was identified in Ogun State, authorities at state and federal levels have reacted with varying degrees of seriousness to the pandemic.
One of those who clearly took it seriously, perhaps too seriously, was Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike. First, he arrested two Caverton Helicopters pilots and prosecuted them for violating his state’s Covid-19 regulations.
It turned out the pilots had clearance from the Federal Government. Not long afterwards he apprehended a busload of oil workers and it took the threat of a nationwide shutdown of the oil and gas sector for him to let them go.
A few days ago, he made it clear how serious he was about locking the virus out of Rivers State: he bulldozed two hotels that violated the Executive Order he issued shutting down parts of Port Harcourt.
The massive fallout that followed raised the question whether he had overreacted. Was this the perfect example of the cure being worse than the disease? Some suggested he could have sealed the buildings or converted them to isolation centres. Perhaps he should have sealed them and waited for a court to order demolition in line with the law.
But what is appropriate punishment for an action that not only endangers lives, but actually leads to death? If someone had died after being exposed to infection at the hotels would the proprietors of the facility be guilty of manslaughter or murder? Viewed in that light was demolition excessive?
Of course, there’s no guarantee that the demolitions would deter other potential violators. After all, the existence of the death penalty has not stopped people from committing crimes that attract capital punishment.
While Wike battles on against all comers, up north the business of mysterious deaths continues unabated. First, it was Kano, now there are reports of hundreds dying in parts of Bauchi, Yobe and Jigawa.
Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed, admitted that 150 people died in Azare town in one month and not one week as claimed by a former member of the House of Representatives, Ibrahim Baba. But just like his Kano State colleague, Abdullahi Ganduje, before him, he blamed the deaths on hypertension and other ailments – insisting they were not Covid-19 related.
Since those affected had been buried, it is not clear if state authorities reached this conclusion after exhumation of the bodies and examining them. Or they relied on verbal autopsy as in the case of Kano.
Meanwhile, in Jigawa State an interesting dimension emerged with a certain Senator Ibrahim Hadejia asserting that people were dying not from coronavirus but fasting!
The trouble with his theory is people have been observing the annual fasting ritual for eons and there’s no record of them dropping dead in numbers because of their spiritual exertions.
As his intervention became the subject of a thousand jokes, the senator tried to walk back his comments. He said he had been quoted out of context – the favourite excuse of everyone in Nigeria who comes down with a bad case of foot-in-the-mouth disease.
One of the biggest challenges authorities face in tackling the pandemic is not shortage of bed space or testing capacity. Rather it is the enduring scepticism. If anything, as the toll has risen so has the ranks of the sceptics grown.
Even worse is the attitude of many towards the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). For them, this is not an agency out to save lives, rather it’s a mere advocate of lockdowns sent from hell to disrupt their lives and businesses.
Aside disputing the numbers churned out daily, they insist that Covid-19 in Nigeria is not the original article.
They argue that unlike coronavirus patients in New York, London and elsewhere who you see clinging to life on ventilators or looking sufficiently sick, their Nigerian counterparts are anything but. They sneer when you talk of varying degrees of severity of symptoms. You point out in vain that Mallam Abba Kyari died from this disease.
But who can blame them? A few days ago, Covid-19 patients in Gombe State broke out of isolation and blocked a major road chanting anti-government songs to protest maltreatment at the facility.
In another incident, two doctors and a nurse were held hostage by patients at the Kwanar Dawakin isolation centre in Kano. They were angry over delays in testing and treatment. Back in Kaduna, a fleeing coronavirus patient engaged a security official who wouldn’t let him out to pray in a scuffle.
At a facility in Oghara, Delta State, a naval rating pulled a knife on guards who tried to stop him from smoking a marijuana joint. In a recent video, some bored patients were captured doing cartwheels in their ward. They were that ill.
Let’s end with some cheery news. There may be an increase in new cases, but hundreds have also been discharged in Lagos and other states.
But even this bit of positivity is suspicious for the sceptics. How come people are recovering in droves from a supposedly deadly virus? This development solidifies their position that what we have here is simply malaria and typhoid masquerading as the real thing.
It’s all too reminiscent of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who dismissed Covid-19 as just a “little flu.” As you read this, nearly 12,000 people have died since the outbreak of that “little flu” in his country.
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