Category: Emeka Omeihe

By Emeka Omeihe

Keen observers since the outbreak in this country, of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic will admit high level of publicity and public sensitization on the dangers of the scourge. The media are suffused with materials on the reality of the pandemic, its dangers to human co-habitation, the high death toll in various parts of the world and the fact that no known cure has yet been found for the viral disease. Varying media strategies are on ground to drum into the ears of the public, the lethality of the pandemic and the protocols to navigate out of danger.

The country was put on total lockdown for months with movements restricted. This virtually paralyzed all human activities with heavy toll on business and commercial engagements. The lockdown is gradually being eased to enable life resume. The cost of all these measures, threatening to throw the nation into recession, is quite huge.

Yet, the government had to do what it did to save human race from extermination given the mode of transmission of the viral disease. It would have been inconceivable for the government to have opted for these far-reaching and costly measures if it did not believe in the mortal danger the spread of the viral disease represents. The wide publicity the pandemic has attracted is part of the commitment of government to give a rounded attack to the viral disease.

It was in part, on account of this that speculations arose recently on the huge sums of money spent on publicity by the Presidential Task Force PTF on the pandemic which they have denied. Ironically, despite all the efforts to sensitize the public with all the protocols to stay safe, there still exists a wide gamut of doubt within the larger society on the reality and overall management of the pandemic. Why this has remained so is as curious as it is troubling.

This trend can even be discerned from publicity messages by relevant organs and agencies of the government in both conventional and unconventional media platforms. It is also evident from the ambivalence of a great percentage of the population to the protocols to keep the disease at bay. The same tendency is no less perceptible from raging doubts on the reality of the pandemic despite escalating infections across the country. As at Thursday last week, the figure had reached 18, 480 with 745 cases recorded that singular day, the highest ever since the outbreak. This raises questions as to whether all the sensitization programs are really making the desired impact.

A perusal of the print and electronic media quickly throws up such messages as “Corona virus is real”. You will also be confronted with an array of protocols to stay out of danger including social distancing, staying at home, wearing of face masks, regular washing of hands etc.

You will also see messages drawing similarities between the symptoms of malaria and Covid-19 but with marked dissimilarities in the different agents that cause them and the fact that while the former cannot spread from person to person, the latter does. These are also being reinforced by testimonies from survivors, all to draw closer the reality of the pandemic.

A classic case came from Delta Government House, Asaba last week when two prominent sons of the state came public to testify on their experiences with the disease while in isolation centre. The two survivors: Austin Eruotor and Jerry Azinge were unanimous that Covid-19 is real even as they urged the public to strictly adhere to the relevant protocols for protection and to curb the disease.

But they had their different experiences and manifestations of the disease symptoms. Eruotor who was the index case in the state faulted those who think COVID-19 is malaria because of the symptoms. He said while in the isolation centre for 36 days, the virus was moving all over his stomach to the chest and that he was in oxygen for five days before he stabilized. Eruotor touched on the crux of this essay when he said “my coming out to share my experience is because many people still don’t believe that COVID-19 is real. I am a testimony”.

In his own case, Azinge narrated how he got infected and was quarantined at the FMC isolation centre, Asaba for 18 days. He said he did not have difficulty in breathing or eating but was always tired and had difficulty in standing even as sleeping was difficult all through the night. He had fever also. “So because of the differences in the manifestation of the virus on victims, some people doubted its existence. It is real” Azinge said. It is obvious the two cases were selected to capture some of the issues at the centre of the raging doubts on the reality of the viral disease.

All these underscore a groundswell of public doubt on the reality of the pandemic. So many people including well educated people still live in self denial of the reality of the pandemic even in the face of daily escalation of infection rate and the attendant death roll. Why this has remained so despite facts on the ground and events around the world remains largely puzzling.

The growing disregard to protocols since the ease of the lockdown is an indication that many are not taking the matter as seriously as they should in a life-threatening situation. You will even hear people openly passing all manner of negative remarks against the reality of the pandemic, the advertised infection rate and it overall management.

This writer decided to probe further the source of the prevailing doubts by interviewing some citizens. The following is the outcome of the conversation:

Question: Is corona virus real. If it is real what is the source of the doubts by some people?

Answer: the respondent who spoke on condition of anonymity said “I believe the viral disease is real”. The world all over is battling with the disease. If advanced nations such as the United States of America US, Britain, France and Germany etc can be so overpowered by the pandemic with huge death tolls, it smacks of ignorance for someone here to still nurse doubt on its reality.

Many of us know there is Covid-19. But many people do not trust the government and its officials. It is this distrust that is rubbing off negatively on the campaign. One major source of this doubt is the figures being rolled out by the PTF on the number of those that have tested positive.

Asked how figures on COVID-19 positives, those discharged and the death toll constituted a problem, he said the way they emerge seems like figures are being allocated. “You find a state that previously had no incident of the virus, all of a sudden coming up with 30 or more cases. We did not hear of three of five cases before the sudden escalation. Were all the 30 cases tested in one day or what?

Another respondent who simply identified himself as John said governments are responsible for the regime of doubts. We hear a lot of stories about the use of donations to COVID-19 Relief Fund. People have been demanding accountability on the disbursement of the funds as well as the disbursement of the N20, 000 stimulus packages for the poorest in the society by the ministry of humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development. The inability of the minister to publish beneficiaries in their website, creates doubts on some of the things we are being made to believe, he said.

For David Mong, the government should go beyond the figures and publish the list of those that have tested positive. Many of us cannot point at someone we know suffering from the viral disease despite the high number of those that are said to have tested positive. When reminded that our laws do not permit of such disclosures on health matters of citizens, he quipped “but they can narrow the areas of high infection to make it believable”.

Yet, there are others who believe the high figures are invented by government officials to ‘chop’ money. The later rely on claims by some of those who had been to isolation centres that their results were manipulated, the altercation between the Kogi State government and the PTF and the non discovery of a single positive case in Cross River State to sustain doubts on the reality and management of the pandemic.

By Emeka Omeihe

Things will not be the same even when the corona virus COVID-19 pandemic has been substantially tamed.

Social relations, ways of conducting businesses and life generally will still be heavily influenced by the lingering impact of that viral disease.

We have seen its devastating effects on the lives of the citizenry, exposing the vulnerability of a health care delivery system that has over time, been neglected and starved of the needed investments.

The world economy was shutdown to restrict movements and general interaction given that the virus is largely transmitted through human contact.

Though a nexus exists in the protocols for the containment of the pandemic by countries, their effects differ between and among countries.

So it is with us here in Nigeria. The shutdown has brought with it serious challenges for the nation’s economy.

Our productive sector was put on hold for a couple of months. But the contradiction between continued shutdown and the imperative of survival led the government to a gradual and phased reopening of the economy so that life can return.

We are approaching the third phase of the ease of the lockdown even with infection levels still escalating. The situation is still very fluid.

It will thus, appear hasty to start estimating the overall impact of the pandemic on the Nigerian economy. Nobody knows for certain when the scourge will be over, its overall toll on human lives and the larger economy.

But estimates by the International Monetary Fund, IMF, which put global recession above three per cent as a result of the pandemic, give a grim picture of the emerging scenario.

The figure could be much higher for Nigeria with weak structures and weak institutions.

No doubt, COVID-19 has triggered serious crisis within the public health sector with debilitating effects on the Nigerian economy especially with the sharp drop in the price of oil in the world market.

Given the centrality of oil in the revenue profile of the country, reduced revenue earning is bound to take a negative toll on all sectors of our national economy.

This is already evident in the sharp rise in inflation with the concomitant fall in the value of the naira. It is also manifest in the wave of retrenchments and salary cuts going on within the private sector.

The private sector has been badly assailed by the fallouts of the shutdown occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Perhaps, the banking industry is among the very few currently (albeit temporarily) spared of the gale of retrenchments and salary cuts pervading the private sector.

The Central Bank of Nigerian CBN and the Bankers’ Committee had to wade in to suspend retrenchment or layoff of any staff of banks whether full or part time.

This followed feelers that banks were about to retrench. The CBN said it took the measure to minimize and mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on families and livelihoods. The apex bank requires its express approval to be sought if such layoffs become absolutely necessary.

Before the CBN action, Group Managing Director of Access Bank, Herbert Wigwe was reported to have mulled the bank’s planned mass retrenchment of its workforce on account of the COVID-19 lockdown.

He had said via a video conferencing in a town hall meeting with staff that most of those to be affected by the retrenchment are outsourced staff and those offering non essential services.

But its permanent staff is not completely left out as the bank also intended to effect pay cuts across the board. Wigwe rationalized the proposed action on some of the measures occasioned by COVID-19 including the fact that some of the bank’s branches’ will remain closed till December. So, “everybody may have to make some adjustments of some sort”, he reportedly said.

Access Bank may not be alone in this predicament. Perhaps, the only difference is that it was the first to voice out the dire straits in which the banking industry has been mired on account of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Perhaps also, the timely intervention of the CBN has not allowed the true picture of extant challenges of the banking industry consequent upon the corona virus pandemic to emerge.

But they can be discerned from the frustrations of customers desiring banking services.

Social distancing and some of the protocols to stem the pandemic have led banks and other business concerns to evolve new ways of doing business.

These are bound to activate some form of business and organizational restructuring with fewer people at work stations. There appears to have emerged a new normal within the banking industry.

While some bank branches are yet to fully open for business even with the ease of the lockdown, others have had to make do with skeletal services as staff are rotated every other day. Yet, some other staff members operate from their homes.

These measures are beginning to define the way banking business is conducted both within the period of the pandemic and thereafter.

One thing that remains certain is that things are not going to be the same for the banking industry. Before now, technology had taken much of the job of human capital in the banking industry.

Increasing reliance on digital technology and e-banking had already pruned down labor force within the industry very substantially. This trend is bound to be given added fillip by emerging events as banks battle to remain in business.

The CBN order may have given temporary succour to workers in the banking industry. This is understandable given the spiral effect of unrestrained retrenchments on the national economy at these perilous times.

But for how long will the CBN sustain this directive without putting the operations of the banks in jeopardy? To what extent can we obstruct the dynamics of demand and supply as major forces in determining efficiency in commercial organizations? These are the issues to contend with.

It would seem the CBN is not oblivious of this interplay. That is why it left a window requiring banks that find it absolutely necessary to retrench to get its express approval.

That may as well be. The reality however, is that banks are not faring well in the face of the pandemic. This is not peculiar to Nigeria as global trends bear it out.

Unemployment and job losses have shot up globally in the wake of the pandemic. Latest figures from the US Labour Department (as of May, 14) showed that 36.5 million American citizens filed unemployment claims since the pandemic forced the shutdown of the US economy.

Additionally, the overall unemployment rate shot up to 14.7 per cent in April, the worst figure on record since monthly jobless statistics began to be compiled in 1948. That is the story of the US.

The reaction of the US government to such emergencies saw to the deployment of public funds to bail out ailing industries.

It called this into action to save the automobile industry, the banking sector and others from insolvency during the financial crisis of 2008.

That government has reportedly injected $2 trillion bailout funds for companies to mitigate the effects of the pandemic.

Just last week, the World Food Program of the United Nations warned that COVID-19 may lead to loss of 13 million jobs in Nigeria.

This figure paled into insignificance when Vice President Osinbajo led Economic Sustainability Plan Committee told the nation that COVID-19 pandemic has caused 33.6 per cent astronomic rise in unemployment indicating that 39.4 million people will be unemployed by the end of 2020 if proactive steps are not taken to arrest the situation.

That says it all. Job losses in all sectors of the national economy are palpable. It requires the direct action of the federal government through bailouts, injection of huge funds and investments in the productive sectors to stem the looming gale of unemployment.

 

By Emeka Omeihe

It is not always political leaders make statements that are revelatory of realities within their spheres of authority. It is either they exaggerate situations to cover up their shortcomings or get even with perceived enemies.

But the statement credited to Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo State when he received the report of the visitation panel on Imo State University Teaching Hospital IMSUTH, Orlu appears one of the few exceptions.

The chairman of the panel, Prof. Frank Akpuaka had briefed the governor on the scope of their work including the challenges they met on ground.

Among the debilitating deficits they encountered, are inaccessible roads, infrastructural decay, poor funding and inability of the institution to retain staff. The panel also reported that all equipment in the radiography unit including; MRI, CT scan and the Mammography are obsolete. There were also issues of low patronage and maladministration.

For these glaring shortcomings, the National Universities Commission, NUC, denied the medical school accreditation such that in the last four years, it had been unable to admit medical students. Such was the chilling tale of a teaching hospital as told by the visitation panel.

Apparently startled by the sheer weight of the challenges confronting that singular institution, Uzodinma was reported to have said that IMSUTH is sick.

But he did not just stop at that. He extrapolated “if IMSUTH is sick, then the entire health sector of the state is in trouble”. He could not have put it in a better way. And that is precisely where we enter the fray.

Imo State University was the second state university to be established in this country in 1981 coming after Enugu State University of Science and Technology ESUT in 1980. The institution, built through communal efforts by the old Imo State, was a child of necessity to satisfy the high educational needs of thousands of qualified indigenes regularly denied admission into federal universities on account of discriminatory and suffocating admission policies.

The story of how the university relocated after Abia State was created and the thorns strewn on its way is beyond the scope of this essay. But suffice it to say that the university has since grown with tremendous impact on its immediate constituents.

It was in furtherance of this objective that the Achike Udenwa administration committed itself to the establishment of the university teaching hospital in Orlu to offer tertiary health services from its present site.

That administration selected the site and built both the teaching hospital and the School of Nursing from the scratch. Before Udenwa exited office, the hospital was firmly on ground as full services had commenced.

As a matter of fact, all the equipment in the radiography unit including the MRI, CT scan and the Mammography which the panel said is now obsolete were already in that institution early 2007.

But they were still in the containers because the houses where they were to be installed were not ready before the end of the tenure of that regime in May, 2007. Thirteen years ago when they arrived, they were modern and the first of their type in that part of the country.

Curiously, in the four years Udenwa’s successor, Ikedi Ohakim was on the saddle, these vital equipments remained in the containers as no effort was made to install them. The story then was that Ohakim had other plans to relocate the hospital for very inexplicable reasons. With such mindset, the hospital suffered criminal neglect during that regime.

If a government could pay scant attention to the affairs of a teaching hospital, its overall disposition to healthcare delivery would no longer be in doubt. It was during that period the exodus of qualified health professionals and some of the problems listed by the panel began to manifest.

The deplorable state of IMSUTH was a serious campaign issue when Ohakim made a second term bid. Ohakim could not actualize his devious plan of relocating the hospital before his regime had a fatal electoral accident.

That was the miserable narrative as Ohakim dismounted from the horse.

Then enter Governor Rochas Okorocha, a man who rode on populist crest to wrest power from an incumbent. Okorocha showed no interest in the affairs of IMSUTH either because of his obsession to obliterate the achievements of his predecessors or to score cheap political points.

Soon, he began to implement a bogus and ill-advised project of constructing 27 general hospitals in each of the local government areas of the state.

Huge contracts were quickly awarded and bloc structures purporting to be hospitals sprang up near the major roads in the 27 local government areas of the state.

In the eight years Okorocha held sway, not even one of these hospitals was completed and delivered to provide the services required of them.

He was later to embark on a bizarre bazaar of donating some of those structures to military and paramilitary federal institutions. Nigerian Police got the one in Ideato South, his local government. The Nigerian Air Force got another around Ngor Okpala.

Yet, there is no functioning general hospital in both the Ideato North and South local government areas where he comes from.

The one that existed somewhere in Ideato North was quickly dismantled when the bogus idea of 27 general hospitals cropped up. That is the story of the 27 general hospitals. Today, those structures have been abandoned and overgrown by weeds.

They stood for practically nothing in the subsisting emergency created by the corona virus COVID-19 pandemic. Imo would not have been contending with bed spaces if investments committed to those projects did not go down the drains.

The buildings are still there. But I am told buildings do not make hospitals. There is much more to a hospital than bloc structures. Okorocha had a disjointed, disoriented and suspicious healthcare deliver policy-a policy that left the teaching hospital a ghost of its former self.

It was an era of strikes qua strikes, nonpayment of salaries of staff and exodus of qualified doctors. The road to the hospital was completely cut off with medical students staying more than 10 years before graduation.

In the last four years, the medical school has been denied accreditation by the NUC because of inability by the government to fund the institution.

Yet, this is a hospital that trains doctors, a referral hospital that should be on first line charge of government’s investments in the health sector.

Whatever image it cuts, mirrors vividly the state of health of the health sector in Imo State. IMSUTH is really sick, so also is the entire health sector of the state. It is not enough for Uzodinma to recognize that IMSUTH is sick.

Neither will it make the required difference if the objective is to get even with political adversaries. His sincerity will hinge on the steps he takes to reverse the narrative. Can he?

It is instructive that the visitation panel was set up by the short-lived but action-packed regime of Emeka Ihedioha. He had engaged IMSUTH staff that was on strike before he assumed office to call off the action, awarded contract for the rehabilitation of the road to the institution and was on serious efforts to address their lot before the unexpected happened.

Uzodinma is a beneficiary of Ihedioha’s foresight in setting up the panel. From the way he spoke, he does not seem under illusion on the enormity of the challenges of the institution.

But he must go beyond emotions to frontally tackle the IMSUTH challenge and the yawning development gaps in the state.

This is not the time for grandstanding or running down imaginary foes to gain legitimacy.  The difference will predicate in the way he attends to the overall development of a state that has had all its institutions despoiled, desecrated and brought to an all time low by amateur and buccaneer leadership. But can he rid himself of the legitimacy hangover evident from some of his actions?

By Emeka Omeihe

A number of issues arose in the course of the current fight against the corona virus COVID-19 pandemic that raise questions on the capacity of the law enforcement agencies to live up to their statutory mandate.

Not only did such lapses expose the failings of those at the leadership of our security organizations, they added up sabotaging government policies to contain the viral disease spread. But in all these, the nation was worse for it.

In the wake of the rising spread of the viral disease, the federal government banned inter-state movements to stem further escalation. That decision was informed by the reality that whereas some states were recording a fast spread in the disease, some others had no incidence of it at all. And given the manner of its spread, restricting inter-state movements would effectively diminish community transmission, it was reasoned.

No doubt, it was a well thought out regulation whose efficacy depended more on the law enforcement agencies. The state governments went further to give their own peculiar interpretation to the regulation which has worked with varying degrees of success. But this difference in success levels is hinged essentially on what the law enforcement agencies made of the order.

Incidentally, information from across the southern states on compliance with the restriction order on inter-state movements has been quite disappointing. At the centre of the infractions that marred the order, is the transportation of truckloads of almajirai and other able-bodied youths from some state in the north to the south.

From Oyo to Abia, Cross River to Anambra states, we have been inundated with worrying reports of this category of youths and children making their ways into the southern states in circumstances that have remained largely suspicious. The coincidence of such illegal movements with the decision of northern governors to return the almajirai to their home states did not help matters. Kaduna, Jigawa and some other states have been contending with the almajirai who tested positive to the viral disease after their deportation from Kano State.

It is therefore to be expected that the presence of such youths in high numbers, defying interstate lockdown is unlikely to go down well with a lot of people. Matters were not helped by their mode of entry into these states. The fact of their being concealed in truckloads of food items and cows that fall within the essential services exempted from inter-state movements’ restriction further lends their motive suspect.

Many of them have been detected and turned back to their states of take-off while some made a success flouting the restriction order. Eyebrows have been raised by some governors in the south on how the almajirai and the other youths managed to beat the security cordon, in some instances traversing about seven states before they were caught. This has been the source of the suspicion of connivance with security agencies and allegations that the almajirai are on a mission to spread the disease in the southern states.

Expectedly, there have been altercations in some quarters querying the southern states for turning back the youths to states from which they embarked on the journey. Some have even gone to ridiculous lengths pandering to the fault lines of our defective federal order by insinuating some agenda in the entire exercise.

They cite extant laws guaranteeing freedom of movement to all citizens to fault the back-loading of the offending youths to their states of embarkation. But that is where they got it all wrong. The fact remains that those youths (whether of the almajiri hue, suspected bandits, terrorists or even innocent people) were on an illegal voyage. There is a subsisting ban on inter-state movements and anybody caught flouting the law deserves corresponding punishment. It is an emergency period and we are all confined to emergency order. We are in abnormal times where the freedom of the citizenry is being circumscribed for public good.

So it is neither a matter of freedom of movement being assaulted nor that of state governors acting arbitrarily. It has nothing to do with the rights of any and every Nigerian to live in any part of the country of his choice. That right has always been there and all citizens had savored it bountifully.

But we are being guided by a new order. We are confronted by a viral disease that has held the entire world prostrate. With the pandemic are new challenges, new ways of doing old things. And in these unusual times, there must be strict adherence to extant protocols to substantially tame the ravaging virus.

These are the sacrifices we should collectively own as part of our contributions to save humanity. So, it gets somewhat confounding when people for whatever reasons, begin to question the decision of the governors of the south to turn back youths attempting to enter their states in manners that are evidently suspicious. The governors are doing the right thing.

After all, their counterparts in the northern states took the first decision to terminate the age long almajiri order and return inmates to their home states. There are reasons for terminating an order that has been with their establishment for donkey years now. They are entitled to that decision since humanity always contends with change dynamics.

There are also posers as to what business such young persons with no skills have streaming to the south where competition for survival is very keen. From the reports we get, many of them that managed to get into some southern states were offloaded at the food markets or cow sheds with little evidence they have any roof to lay their heads.

Some of them stream aimlessly along the roads and markets while others were seen in other open spaces, raising more concerns about their mission. And with the scaling down of business activities consequent upon the lockdown, how this category of people intend to survive remains largely curious. Their presence no doubt, raises serious security concerns especially given the plethora of security challenges the nation is currently facing. These are some of the issues. They go beyond grandstanding and bandying tendentious allegations.

But the security agencies share much of the blame. These movements could not have been possible without connivance or laxity. It is not a surprise that some governors have accused them of taking bribe in lieu of allowing them free access. It is difficult to fathom how a trailer load of food items carrying a large number of youths could possibly maneuver the security checkpoints on the way from Kano to Oyo or Ebonyi State without being detected. Is that possible? NO!

But as the nation was contending with these security lapses, there arose a confusing order from the Inspector-General of Police IGP, Adamu Mohammed instructing all police formations not to allow the movement of essential services providers during the period of the subsisting curfew. This came as a rude shock to many as the order contradicted all known norms during emergencies. Even at that, during the many weeks we had to contend with the virus spread, essential services providers had always been allowed free movements.

So, how come the IGP woke up one morning to decree that this category of people will not be allowed to do their work as the curfew lasted? How come also the senior police officers he purportedly engaged in a virtual meeting with, never drew his attention to the inherent dangers and incongruity of such a directive? And from where did the IGP get the authority to countermand President Buhari’s order on the issue? We ask these questions because in every emergency situation, essential services providers are usually allowed free movement. The law enforcement agencies fall within this category. It is to be imagined what the situation will be if they are restricted from doing their duties during emergencies.

The IGP has reversed himself. But not before the Lagos State chapter of the Nigerian Medical Association NMA embarked on a sit-at-home strike for being harassed by the police while answering the calls of their duties. Who knows the number of those that suffered fatalities as the counterproductive order lasted? In serious climes, somebody would have lost his job for that irrational and ridiculous order. But not here!

By Emeka Omeihe

It is trite that every new situation comes with its own challenges. So it is with the current war against the corona virus COVID-19 pandemic.

With the pandemic are emerging issues in the way we hitherto lived our lives; new challenges in our socio-political organization, new tests in the way we conduct business, run our schools and engage in virtually every other human endeavor. It is akin to a war situation that is bound to produce new outcomes.

But it is not a conventional warfare with defined territories. There are neither armies nor ammunitions in deploy for the war.

This war has no boundaries and does not discriminate between races and peoples. It is an invisible war where no shots are fired. Yet, its lethality is only comparable to situations of biological or chemical warfare.

Fighting such war is bound to be very daunting. That is why even with the sophistication of the advanced countries in warfare, they have found themselves routed by this armless and invisible enemy.

So it is that many of them have found themselves virtually helpless in the face of the ravaging virus. The situation is bound to be more tasking for developing countries such as ours with weak institutions and weak structures.

Faced with these challenges, the new reality is recommending new ways of doing virtually every old thing and our hapless citizens are expected to align themselves. It is an entirely new beginning that fits into the category of the Khunian revolution. It calls for paradigm shift.

That accounts for the plethora of protocols rolled out by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, and the various state governments to redirect the way we hitherto conducted our lives. The overall objective being to flatten the curve of the disease spread and save humanity from annihilation.

The various levels of government, their agencies and personnel have put in a lot even at the risk of personal lives to ensure the lethal disease does not consume our people. Of special concerns are all categories of health workers who have put their lives at grave risk just to save the lives of victims of the pandemic.

Some of them working under difficult conditions, have contracted the disease and even lost their lives in the course of saving human lives.

All these sacrifices must to be appreciated especially given the non availability of personal protective equipments at the initial stages of the pandemic.

But there are emerging issues from our strategies to the war that must be addressed else they diminish some of the progress made. There are increasing doubts in the minds of the discerning public on some of the issues arising from the management of the pandemic.

When these are juxtaposed against skepticisms in some quarters on the reality of the viral disease, it is to be imagined the damage they can do to the efforts to contain the disease.

No doubt, the confidence of the people is vital to the overall success of the war against the disease. The general public must buy into the sincerity of the campaign.

They must believe in all they are being told about the viral disease to respect and abide by all the protocols to keep it at check. Creating doubts in the minds of the citizens on account of actions or inactions of governments and their agencies is not helping matters especially in a clime many are still finding it difficult to observe the rules of the time.

We are faced with conflicting signals when we hear Kogi State government accuse unnamed people of attempting to force fictitious COVID-19 figures on the state for political reasons.

This is even as the state government maintains that no person has tested positive for the viral disease. It has also rebuffed all attempts by the NCDC to come into the state to verify the claims.

This altercation is unhealthy given the circumstance of the time. But more seriously, it raises eyebrows as to whether Kogi State is privy to some information that the coming of the NCDC will herald the discovery of COVID-19 afflicted persons.

Perhaps, there is something the state government knows that is not readily available to the discerning public. Whatever it is, the quarrel is not serving the course of the campaign because of the credibility issues it has thrown up.

Read Also: COVID-19 and mental health

If a state government could bandy such weighty allegations, there may be more to the COVID-19 pandemic campaign than ordinarily meets the eyes. Before now, many have lived in self-doubt about the reality of the viral disease.

That accounts in the main, for the scant regard for the protocols that will aid the authorities win the war against the pandemic. Such doubts are bound to worsen with claims emanating from Kogi State.

The federal government must come clear on what the issues are with the Kogi State government. We need to know the source of the fictitious figures and the purpose they intend to serve.

There was also the demonstration in Gombe State by isolated patients who took to the highways because they were not being cared for.

Their grouse was that they spent days in the isolation centre without being attended to or have drugs administered on them. Some of them who spoke to the media even doubted they had the viral disease.

But the relevant authorities claimed that all those at that centre were asymptomatic. Even if that was the case, they should have been taken into confidence about the state of their ailment. Treating them in a manner that predisposed them to suspicion and subsequent demonstrations left a sour taste in the mouth.

It not only created doubts in the minds of the people but reinforced the suspicion that there may be other reasons to the high figures being churned out from some quarters. Such doubts are even reinforced with the mingling of villagers with the demonstrating isolated patients.

The impression those villagers will take away from the unfortunate incident is that all that is being said about the viral disease may after all be a fluke.

The Gombe incident is inexorably linked to the Benue indent case. The woman had alleged in a video that went viral that she had sent 43 days in isolation without treatment. The ‘patient’ who was taken into custody on her return from abroad, disputed claims that she had the viral disease.

She bandied damaging allegations against the Benue State government and called for an independent inquisition into her case.

Though the Benue State government denied some of her claims, issues relating to that incident have at best, been shrouded in secrecy. But they add to the growing suspicion on the sincerity of the management of the pandemic.

Nothing however, illustrates more vividly the growing credibility issues on the management of the pandemic than the altercation between the Lagos State Commissioner for Health Prof. Akin Abayomi and returnees from Dubai currently in isolation. This followed the announcement by the commissioner that one of the returnees from Dubai died of the viral disease.

Some of the returnees have disputed this claim. According to them, the person that died returned in a wheel chair after undergoing a surgery in Dubai.

But instead of sending him to the hospital, he was isolated with others until his situation deteriorated. They contended that had the patient been sent to the hospital earlier, he may not have died even as they dispute the claim by the commissioner that he died of the viral disease.

Nothing has again been heard of the face-off between the commissioner and the returnees after the former visited their hotel.

Neither has anything been heard of the disputed health conditions of the dead returnee nor the actual cause of his death. The public is left to decide which side of the story to believe.

Unfortunately such yawning gaps in information management do not help the course of the war against the pandemic.

Is it surprising that there are emerging doubts on the credibility of the tests being run by the relevant agencies? It is important to eliminate the sources of these doubts and firm up the confidence of the people in the credibility of the exercise.

This is the surest way to enhance the success of the war in a predominantly illiterate and poor setting where governments are hardly trusted.

Emeka OMEIHE

 

Kaduna State government and the state chapter of the Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC are at daggers drawn. The bone of contention is the decision of Governor Nasir El-Rufai to cut 25 per cent of the salaries of senior civil servants in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The state government said it would deduct that percentage from the salaries of all civil servants receiving N67, 000 and above to provide palliatives to vulnerable citizens affected by the ravaging viral disease.

But the state NLC is vehemently opposed to the proposal on the ground that it was not consulted before such a decision with far-reaching consequences on the overall well-being of the civil servants was taken.

Matters were not helped given that even before the decision was made public, the state government had gone ahead to effect the deductions from the April salaries of its civil servants.

This did not go down well with the NLC which has asked the government to return the deductions or face the wrath of the union.

Citing international labour conventions on such matters, the union said though it is in principle not against the deduction of workers’ salaries for the purpose intended but their consent ought to be sought before such deductions are made. Even then, the deductions should be voluntary, it further contended.

The state chapter of the NLC is on point. They are not necessarily against salary deductions to ameliorate the sufferings of victims of COVID-19.

That much, they have said. But what they did not find funny is the very arbitrary manner the government went about the matter.

Issues bordering on the salaries and allowances of workers are generally very touchy and sensitive.

At a time workers are contending with excruciating living conditions and general increase in the prices of essential commodities occasioned by the same COVID-19 pandemic, the mere thought of salary cut, is bound to ruffle feathers in no small way.

Being a sensitive matter, the least expected of that government was to have approached the matter with great caution. That did not happen as events have shown.

The fact that the government hatched such an idea (no matter how well-intentioned) and proceeded to implement it without taking organized labour into confidence, exposes all that is wrong with the policy process on these shores .

Being a unilateral action, the NLC is within its rights to mount opposition against it. Had the government taken labour into confidence, perhaps the right percentage cut and the modalities for its implementation would have been amicably ironed out without recourse to muzzle flexing.

We are led into this conclusion given the disclosure by the NLC that it is not in principle against the pay cut to take care of vulnerable persons affected by the ravaging viral disease.

What they are against is the arbitrariness of the action. Why the Kaduna State government never deemed it necessary to factor in the feelings of organized labour in such a sensitive matter remains largely curious.

The cloudy labour atmosphere hovering over the state appears the price the government is now paying for that act of indiscretion.

And the cost could be very high if the government does not take steps to redress the situation. Given the challenges of our times, Kaduna State can ill-afford labour crisis now.

The government should hesitate no further in carrying the NLC along in whatever decisions that affect workers’ salaries.

But that is not all there is to this opposition. Underneath the opposition by the NLC is the nagging issue of mistrust.

The way governments are run on these shores has greatly eroded public confidence in the capacity of those in leadership to effectively husband public funds for public good.

Rather, we have had to contend with a leadership style that is steep in scandalous corruption, greed, reckless and ostentatious spending.

Ours is system in which ascendancy to elective and appointive political offices is the quickest and fastest route to opulence.

Little wonder the scandalous lifestyles of this category of people that contrast sharply with the existential realties of the majority of our people as hewers of wood and fetchers of water.

Corruption in public places is the reason this country has been lagging behind in all the development indicators. It is little surprising that Nigeria is now tagged the poverty capital of the world.

Ironically, our country is bountifully endowed with huge natural and human capital that should have been creatively deployed by visionary leaders to catalyze quantum development.

But such high-minded goals have largely remained illusory in a clime suffused with rapacious, selfish and amateur leadership that panders more to prebendal predilections.

That has been the source of the mistrust between the citizenry and their leaders. It is such negative sentiments that are easily evoked each time the government wants the citizens to commit to some modicum of sacrifice.

That was the sentiment at play when the Kaduna State government made public the decision to cut the salaries of workers by a whopping 25 per cent.

Read Also: El-Rufai: ‘I infected four people with COVID-19’

 

Though, the NLC did not openly canvass the issue, it is common knowledge that organized labour is generally opposed to cuts in workers’ salaries because it fears such proceeds will not be properly accounted for and may end up in private pockets.

This feeling also resonated when accountability issues were raised on donations from corporate and private individuals to aid the federal government fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

The argument that is usually put forward when workers are called upon to forgo part of their pay is two-fold.

The first is that Nigerian workers are among the least paid in the world and generally reputed for their serial inability to make ends meet.

With spiraling unemployment and rising inflation, the average worker lives below the poverty line. Any cut in his salary will further push him down the poverty ladder.

Organized labour generally views such cuts as a further way of sentencing the workforce into perpetual servitude.

The other dimension which was mentioned in passing is that many of those who occupy elective and appointive political offices in this country are not trusted by their workers.

The feeling is that our leaders will generally divert public funds into their private pockets. And facts have overtime borne out this suspicion.

So resistance is evoked each time a government toys with pay cut as a way out of its financial problems.

The general feeling is that if governments judiciously deploy public funds and avoid wasteful spending, they may not have cause to tamper with workers’ salaries.

This view is further reinforced given that the salaries of workers pales into insignificance when compared with the huge national resources that are usually frittered away to service non-productive endeavors by political leaders.

The leadership must work hard to disabuse the minds of the citizenry that public good rather than self serving interests are behind their actions.

How to achieve that remains the greatest puzzle even as efforts to fight corruption by the current federal regime have been mired in putrid controversy on account of its observed shortcomings.

More seriously, the Kaduna State government should be more creative in raising funds for the COVID-19 pandemic than easy resort to cuts in the salaries of its workforce.

It is getting clearer by the day that workers face harder times as efforts are geared to ease the lockdown. Some of the measures that will come in place as the lockdown is gradually relaxed will definitely take a toll on worker salaries.

The transport system readily comes into mind as governments roll out measures to enforce social or physical distancing in the public transportation system.

That will mean a reduction in the number of passengers in commercial vehicles. This will obviously come with increase in transport fares.

Great caution must be exercised not to reduce workers as pawns in the chessboard of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

 Emeka Omeihe

 

Scenario-building on post corona virus disease, COVID-19 Nigeria may for now, seem somewhat hasty or even preposterous.

This is to be understood given the immediate preoccupation of the various governments to contain the increasing spread of the viral disease. Faced with this daunting challenge, it would appear a waste of valuable time speculating on the possible consequences of the pandemic for the country when and if it is finally contained.

But such speculations will evoke different feelings if they have to do with easing off of some of the stringent measures to stem the spread of the disease. Because some of these measures are largely temporary, they will have to be relaxed someday to allow normal life return.

There is a limit beyond which we cannot stretch the measures without activating both the necessary and sufficient conditions for socio-economic unrest.

The reality is that the lockdown will somehow be eased off to allow for the resumption of normal activities. This will come with its own challenges as efforts are still in place to contain the spread of the disease. The challenge is in effective measures to take to live with the virus especially given that continued lockdown and sit-at-home are glaringly inconsistent with the conduct of social organization in this country.

How do our usually crowded schools, markets, churches, eateries and hotels respond to such safety rules as social or physical distancing, the use of face masks, regular washing of hands etc.? How do we maintain social distancing in our transportation system without escalating the cost? These and many others are the challenges we will have to contend with when the lockdown is lifted or COVID-19 defeated.

Given the absence of any known vaccine for the treatment of the disease, the reality is that we will have to live with it for now. Even when it has been defeated, there is still no guarantee that it will not re-surface sometime in the future. So, some of these preventive measures may have to live with us in the foreseeable future.

Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres captured the situation most succinctly when he said a safe and effective vaccine may be the only tool that can return the world to a sense of ‘normalcy’.

Yet, the fact that many of those infected, have successfully been treated and discharged gives a glimmer of hope that the virus is incapable of wiping out mankind from the face of the earth. The thing is to prepare to live with the disease now and when it has been substantially tamed.

A recent survey by a group of Harvard Scientists captured the situation thus, “A one-off lockdown won’t halt the novel corona virus and repeated periods of social distancing may be required into 2022 to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. One thing that remains almost certain is that the virus is here to stay”, they concluded.

Going by the figures from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control NCDC, the total number of infected persons successfully managed and discharged stood at 152 while 13 people lost their lives to the disease as at Thursday night, last week.

The fatality rate represented less than 10 per cent of patients successfully treated and discharged.  It is something comforting in the absence of any known vaccine for the cure of the disease that had kept even the most advanced nations of the world on their knees.

This success ratio in the management of COVID-19 patients coupled with scientific efforts to develop the relevant vaccine, gives hope that the virus can be tamed if not permanently, temporarily. Thus, our response to the pandemic should be in two phases – one dealing with how the citizenry can conduct their lives in the midst of the ravaging viral disease, while the other relates to the post-COVID-19 era. President Muhammadu Buhari captured these challenges in his national broadcast last week when he said the pandemic has changed the world as we know it.

In response to these dynamics, he directed about 13 ministries to jointly develop a comprehensive policy for a “Nigerian economy functioning with COVID-19”.

Implicit in this directive is the realization that the pandemic will live with us for some time and our system may inevitably grind to a halt if we do not evolve suitable measures to resume normal economic life while battling with it.

That is the challenge the committee has been saddled with. But even if the committee succeeds in working out models for effective functioning of the Nigerian economy as the pandemic persist, that is not all there is to it. There are other equally potent dimensions to the challenge.

The pandemic has adversely affected our socio-political and cultural organization such that serious adjustments both within the period of the scourge and thereafter have become patently inevitable. There is no doubt about that. Not with the manner of spread of the virus requiring citizens to social or physical distancing; wearing of face masks, washing of hands regularly and general personal hygiene. It will definitely re-define our social organization and relations.

Read Also: Adeboye: Nigeria will recover faster from COVID-19

 

A return to ‘normalcy’ while the pandemic subsists should even be more scaring given the poor state of our health infrastructure; debilitating poverty that earned us the unenviable sobriquet of the world poverty capital and a burgeoning population that has largely remained hewers of wood and fetchers of water. How to conduct daily living in a largely disorganized, disoriented and unstructured economic and socio-political milieu will be quite daunting.

For, much of the measures the pandemic is forcing on our people are largely inconsistent with the daily living circumstances of a vast majority of our citizens that wallow in abject poverty. This group pays scant attention to these rules even as many still believe the pandemic is a hoax.

Ironically, this country is bountifully endowed with huge natural resources by Mother Nature which should have been effectively deployed to create wealth and transform the lives of the citizenry positively but for inept, amateur and irrational leadership that wallows in self-aggrandizement and ethnic chauvinism.

When these stark existential challenges are juxtaposed with the staccato of measures to keep the virus at bay, the reality of what we face during the pandemic and thereafter becomes more glaring. The upsurge in robberies in Lagos-the epicentre of the pandemic is only indicative of the dissonance between some of the measures to contain the scourge and the material conditions of our people.

The hoodlums who have taken to the streets robbing innocent ones both during the day and at night can no longer stand the lockdown notwithstanding its merits. They represent the wretched of the earth without anything to fall back on. For them, it is better for the virus affliction to send them to their graves than hunger. That is part of the contradictions that have been elevated to the fore by the COVID-19 pandemic.

More fundamentally, the pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of our weak systems, institutions and processes. It has more than anything, exposed the inherent dangers in paying scant heed to the development of world class health infrastructure and allied facilities in the country in preference for medical tourism by an uncaring leadership. It has drawn our attention to the reality that whatever we make of our country will someday come back to haunt.

Who could have foreseen a few months back that countries will shut their borders to non-citizens? It would have sounded absurd if someone had told some of our leaders that at this time of the year, they will not be able to seek medical treatment abroad no matter the amount of funds at their disposal.

These are some of the lessons of the current pandemic. Whether our leaders will learn the hard way this time around, will be the defining factor on where we find ourselves in the days ahead.