Category: Barometer

By Barometer

As usual, when faced with labour disputes, the federal government has not always acted reasonably or altruistically. Against the striking National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) with which it has had a running battle for years, the government has oscillated between war-war and jaw-jaw.

After months of dithering over how best to resolve the professional issues causing repeated misunderstanding between doctors and the federal government, the association interpreted government’s seeming indifference as a demonstration of lack of faith. It, therefore, decided to down tools beginning from Monday.  Immediately, the Labour and Health ministries began a fresh and earnest round of negotiations to stave off the strike at a time of massive social and economic dislocations caused by  the coronavirus plague.

On Tuesday, it was obvious that the doctors would not budge. As a result, the Health minister announced that he was directing health institutions to open a register for doctors to sign attendance in order to determine who should be get their salaries and allowances. The doctors called the bluff of the government and proceeded with the strike. They also threatened that if the government had still not met their demands in two weeks, doctors treating COVID-19 patients, but who are temporarily exempted from the strike, would automatically down tools. The government was livid.

By early June, according to some reports, over 800 health workers had tested positive for COVID-19. They are among frontline workers battling the disease. Yet, their April and May allowances and salaries had not been paid, and other incentives promised the doctors to enable them carry out their duties, such as life insurance and personal protective equipment, had also not been provided. It is remarkable that despite failing to live up to its side of the bargain, the government could still threaten the doctors with ‘no-work-no-pay’. Naturally, the doctors were unfazed, wondering what became of the payment due to them over the work they had earlier done.

Last Friday, the government frantically announced that some N4.5bn had been released to pay the doctors. This is surprising. The government knew it was owing the doctors, but chose to blackmail them emotionally by insinuating that they were irresponsible to down tools at a time of medical emergency, even suggesting that Nigerian doctors were the only ones in the world to demonstrate that kind of indifference. But the government provided no proof that similar irresponsible conditions of unpaid salaries and allowances existed in any other country in the world.

As hard as it is to endure the absence of doctors in hospitals at this time, the government surely had the larger blame for failing to discharge its obligations to doctors, other health workers and indirectly the public. It is shocking that the government could threaten to withhold salaries when it had not cleared the backlog of unpaid salaries, and even contemplated sacking intransigent doctors when it had no idea where to source and finance replacements.

A few issues spill over from the doctors’ strike. First, the government is obviously struggling with shortage of funds. For years, not only has the health sector been grossly underfunded, the government has given it little attention and priority. For the first time, public officials have found themselves grounded in Nigeria and forced to seek medical treatment at home. They had been used to flying out of the country for their health needs. But the result of years of neglect has led to the near collapse of Nigerian hospitals and the poor and epileptic payment of salaries and allowances to health workers. In short, no tradition or culture of giving doctors and other health workers their due was established.

Second, it is clear that the government has failed to prioritise the health sector, preferring instead to waste money on political schemes and structures, including foolish policies that do not directly impact on the health sector and well-being of citizens. The government must run their hospitals in such a way that salaries and allowances of health workers would be routine, devoid of labour disputes.

Third, the struggle to discharge its financial obligations to the health sector and other crucial sectors such as education and housing indicate how poorly the federal government is managing the country’s finances. A time of falling oil prices and global downturn indicate alarmingly that Nigeria is running out of time and options. It spends enormous sums, money it has problem generating, to sustain its bloated and unworkable political system. It needs to urgently restructure the system, curb wastes, and merge and rationalise governmental ministries and agencies in order to free money for the essential parts of the system.

There is no question that until the government and the country face reality by re-examining their dysfunctional system and redefining and rationalising the national superstructure, they will continue to struggle to meet their financial obligations. The education sector is heavily underfunded, the health sector is gasping for breath, and poverty is running rampant.

If there is no significant and fundamental change soon, the country must expect further labour disputes to break out in the near future. It is unavoidable. And it will get to a point where the reluctance to grapple with this uncomfortable reality will lead to mass unrest. The needed changes must be made now while the initiative is not lost. For even after the NARD strike is resolved, the turmoil in the health sector will recur if no deep structural changes are made.

By Barometer

If Lagos was not to witness a social explosion, it had to reopen its economy weeks ago. Better a few hundred deaths than a revolution spurred by hunger. It was the right decision.

But that decision was predicated on the readiness of the populace to adhere to a number of rules and regulations policing the lockdown relaxation, including social distancing, discontinuance of Okada mode of public transportation, and other protocols.

With nearly half of the 15,181 infections in Nigeria, Lagos, the epicentre of COVID-19, has an unacceptably high and increasing rate of infections. It surrendered to the Okada menace, and has not been scrupulous in enforcing other protocols.

Read Also: Coronavirus 419

To re-impose lockdown is of course out of the question, but together with the federal government, Lagosians and the rest of the country must be compelled to abide by the rules of the lockdown relaxation.

A few weeks ago, Nigeria competed favourably with other African countries in sustaining low infection and mortality rates, including with Ghana and South Africa.

By Friday, Nigeria had become less competitive with more than 15,000 people infected and a mortality rate of 2.66 percent (or 399 deaths). Compare this figure with Ghana’s 10,358 infections and mortality rate of 0.46 percent (or 48 deaths).

Clearly, despite the hard work of Nigeria’s presidential task force and the expertise of Nigeria’s healthcare professionals, the country has become less effective in managing the disease.

Flattening the curve is still some way off, but it is urgent that Nigeria must review its protocols and find more effective ways of managing a disease that is unlikely to disappear soon.

By Barometer

No one has produced a comprehensive picture of sexual violence in Nigeria. Culture, religion and the fear of stigmatisation ensure that the crime is heavily underreported. The countrywide campaign to curb rape and sexual assault, and the proposed legislation to punish offenders and counsel victims, should help focus attention on what is building up to be a monumental crisis.

Perhaps too, public attitude to the crime might start to change. The National Assembly is working on a legislation to deal with the crime, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum is declaring an emergency — assuming they can come up with a unified understanding of how to view the crime within their cultural and religious continuums — and hopefully the new laws will not pose a judicial conundrum to Nigerian courts. What is clear to everyone is that sexual violence is evil and it must be firmly and unequivocally checked.

It is, however, not clear whether the proposed laws will only attempt to check the crime without sparing any consideration for the factors that breed it. Global understanding of the crime is fairly evenly spread, with rape incidence in some countries assuming frightening dimensions. Though previously underreported, for reasons not quite explicable reports of rape have suddenly spiked, and the usual timidity that had accompanied and weakened efforts to tackle it seems to be noticeably fading. After the laws are passed, and law enforcement reformed, it is hoped that the courts would be sensitive enough to complement the national effort to make the country safe for women and girls, two groups most vulnerable to the heinous crime.

In all the discourse about rape and sexual assault, not much is said or debated to help forge an understanding of their full ramifications. It is necessary to shine the light on these other unusual areas as much as the attention focused on the conventional manifestations of sexual violence. Women and girls, some of them infants in their diapers, are some of the usual victims of rape. Incest is also assuming epidemic proportions. Indeed, given the pervasiveness of sexual violence in Nigeria today, it is beginning to look like everyone is endangered, be they women, men, children or infants.

Read Also: Rising cases of rape in Nigeria

There are a few other aspects of sexual violence hardly mentioned. Two readily come to mind. First, sexual violence is also rife in correctional centres on a shockingly high scale. This may partly have to do with prison congestion, and the fact that authorities as well as prisoners have reconciled themselves to that crime being perpetrated in prisons. Whatever laws will be made to tackle sexual violence must reckon with the fact that the crime also festers in correctional centres. How to curb it in those confines must draw the attention of those drafting the new laws and those expected to implement them. The horrendous abuse that takes place in correctional centres must never be glossed over.

Second, arguments regarding the factors that trigger sexual violence are often so convoluted that key markers of the crime are either missed or glossed over. A number of predisposing factors to rape are often thought to expiate the crime. Women seductively dressed could attract rape, argued some commentators foolishly. In their search for excuses, rapists have also sometimes pleaded alcohol as a contributing factor. But what of infants who have no consciousness of any seduction, and no physiological features to entice rapists? And could someone not naturally a murderer, or a liar, or a racist blame substance abuse as influencing them into becoming something they are not? Do these influences not merely make it far easier for them to manifest their innermost feelings and weaknesses? Someone who is not a paedophile cannot be prompted by revealing dresses or drinks into sexually abusing minors. Many of the arguments used by rapists are inane. If they didn’t have it in them, they could not manifest it.

There are ongoing campaigns to make rapists mend their ways. It is not certain that campaigns can do the job, especially if society does not fully appreciate why some men have ‘wired’ themselves into becoming the moral monsters they have become. Laws could be tightened, but there have always been laws probably strong enough to dissuade rapists. And campaigns can shame rapists and intimidate them into sobriety and moral rectitude, but society has always frowned on and punished the crime.

The problem today is that the society’s moral ramparts are constantly being eroded by a plethora of factors chief among which is pornography purveyed on instant and miniaturised technology. Nudity was a part of African traditional society, but it didn’t inescapably lead to rape or other depraved habits. Today, violent sex scenes and other forms of depravities are cheaply offered on various media platforms. It is thus enormously easier to be influenced today than it was decades ago, and infinitely simpler to excuse or embrace sexual violence.

Campaigns against sexual violence will peter out with time, and new and stiffer laws, after the initial flurry, will settle into complacent impotence. While campaigns and new laws are indispensable to the fight, what will really make a difference are measures taken to deprive rapists of the manure that feed and embolden their crimes, and actions taken to deprive them of the indulgent cultures and traditions that have served as their criminal sanctuaries for decades.

By Barometer

After more than 13 weeks of a desperate and panicky battle against coronavirus disease, a battle everyone hoped would last for two or three months, the federal and state governments are gradually reconciling themselves to the idea of a long struggle. The feistiness of the past few weeks is giving way to sombreness, quick fixes to percolative panaceas, and high expectations to moderate and reasonable optimism.

From shutting or locking down nearly the entire economy and stilling the country’s boisterous social and political environments, the governments have cautiously begun to reopen the country. In fact, they have started to reflect on the measures they had designed and implemented in the past few weeks, wondering whether they were not an infliction of needless punishment, and whether the health scare that metamorphosed into a general societal crisis could not have been handled differently.

Only a few hardy states still administer lockdown. For the rest of the country, in place of that melodramatic and asphyxiating measure, they are reposing nearly all their hopes on ensuring rigid adherence to more realistic protocols which they believe would serve the same purpose of defeating the pandemic without paralysing the economy and destroying livelihoods. Consequently, the airline industry, which had all but collapsed, is being resuscitated and restored to its primacy.

Hotels, social events and entertainment centres are to reopen soon. Interstate lockdown and schools are being re-examined in preparation for reopening. And worship centres, the long-awaited special religious sector, are being opened, with some states deferring the reopening by a week or two. The pandemic is real, but in the face of economic woes, the country, like other countries, is opting for moderation, juxtaposition and balancing.

At first, the federal government appropriated the war against the disease and left little in terms of depth or flexibility to the states, including Lagos State, which first faced the task squarely and hoped to battle the disease to submission as it did the Ebola disease. Now after 13 weeks of breathless undertaking, the federal government has ceded the unending war to the states. When it championed the war, it never really addressed the crisis as comprehensively and adroitly as it should. It is gratifying realism that the feds have fobbed off the war to the states, where it really should have been domiciled from the beginning, with the feds originally expected to smooth out and unify areas of the battle that conflict.

Reason has finally prevailed. Now, the federal government sets broad policies and frameworks for the states to follow in such a manner that allows for state peculiarities. Last week, as part of the federal government’s reopening exercise, the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 pandemic stipulated protocols for the reopening of worship centres. Broadly, it ordered, in addition to the usual general protocols, services or prayers should not exceed certain hours, and children should not be allowed into worship centres because of their lack of maturity in understanding and abiding with health protocols. It is not clear how feasible it is for parents to leave their children at home during worship. Or perhaps the government is simply saying that parents have a choice to make in the matter.

But whether obeying the directive on limited hours of worship or keeping the children at home, some of these measures are going to be difficult to sustain in the weeks ahead. The fear of the disease will constrain parents for a little while, but later, when it is clear that the disease has not been or cannot be eradicated in one fell swoop, vaccine or no vaccine, something will have to give. There is in fact little to show that the populace strictly observes the protocols of lockdown relaxation in other areas of national life. Markets, because of their unsophisticated nature and architecture in Nigeria, remain as rowdy as ever, the roads are busy and face masks a terrible nuisance to many who have breathing issues, and interactions remain difficult and sometimes uncontrollable in areas where demand for social services outstrip supply. The federal and state governments of course mean well when they insist on strict adherence to protocols, and are unimpeachable when they caution that the country must not relapse into complacency in the fight against a disease that is proving relentless and intractable.

And while the government, which hastily began lockdown in the mistaken belief that such a measure was the needed magic bullet for the disease, is reopening the country even in the face of rising infection, it is a tragedy that states like Kogi have thoughtlessly embraced the measure thereby paralysing parts of their state and making the people vulnerable to hunger, disease, and other forms of privations such as robberies and herdsmen attacks.

Kogi for instance has not learnt anything from the experiences of other states, preferring to wallow in ignorance. Reopening is the right way to go. But the federal and state governments have been very lax in monitoring adherence to the rules and regulations of the lockdown relaxation, as they have been ineffective in policing the ban on interstate movement. That laxity must be avoided at all costs as the phased reopening begins in earnest.

By Barometer

A few states, including Kaduna, Niger and Ogun, still continue to implement the lockdown measure as part of their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. They hope that the measure would play a significant role in slowing down the spread of the disease or flattening the curve of infection. If infected members of the public do not mix with one another, the governors and policy makers reason, the chain of infection would be broken.

In addition, they apparently counterintuitively imagine that the days of relaxing the lockdown would magically not aid the spread of the disease. It is not obvious why they think so, or what automatic decontamination process the states in question hope to trigger to counteract infection on the days of no restriction. Interstate movement remains banned, and a national curfew is still in place, but so far, the rate of infection has neither slowed down nor suggested to state officials that they are on the right track.

If intrastate lockdown is in place, and interstate movement is prohibited, and a national curfew is emplaced, but the rate of infection continues to climb, sometimes significantly, surely these facts should lend themselves to a re-examination of the prevailing quarantine paradigm as well as lead officials to be wary of the panoply of measures enacted to fight the global disease. Officials should be a step ahead of the disease, but they seem locked in a perpetual reaction mode to it; first, by failing to understand it, and second by applying the wrong and misguided anodyne when it rears its head or inflicts its pain. Indeed, scientists studying the disease have said it has a self-limiting logic, that at a point in its life cycle it will exhaust itself even without major or concerted countermeasures. So, even if at a point the disease is in remission, there is no proof that it is responding to the various panicky lockdowns concocted to fight it.

Many global health experts, including the World Health Organisation (WHO), have determined that the initial global response to the disease was needlessly panicky and poorly considered. Among the measures, they singled out lockdown as probably inadequate and indeed counterproductive. Nigerian health experts charged with the responsibility of reining in the disease have been slower in embracing a rethink of the anti-coronavirus disease measures. They seem eager to err on the side of caution by retaining measures the rest of the world are increasingly questioning. A few countries never implemented lockdown, and have not witnessed any unusual rise in the rate of infection or mortality. Their example has, however, not recommended itself to Nigeria and other countries still adamant about the lockdown measure’s presumed efficacy.

Global health experts working in tandem with leading economists have in fact concluded that the lockdown measure was a regrettable and counterproductive response to the disease. They do not deny the presence of the disease, nor its virulence, but they view some of the measures deployed to fight it, particularly the lockdown policy, as hurtful to the world economy, an economy that was already teetering on the brink of trouble, if not collapse. Locking down whole countries and regions, in their opinion, simply hastened the contradictions that were maturing in the world economic system. Today, millions of workers have been furloughed or completely laid off; thousands of businesses have shut down or filed for bankruptcy, oil prices have collapsed and are gasping upwards agonisingly at a slow pace, and the consequences to the psychological wellbeing of millions as well as their health have been staggering.

There is an emerging consensus, a very strong consensus, that the world reacted the wrong way to the pandemic. That consensus is not disguised. It is widely publicised, and the world has become gradually persuaded about that consensus. So, why have some Nigerian states not kept abreast of developments in the COVID-19 pandemic rampage and response? Only they can answer that poser. Even their lockdowns have been devoid of logic and consistency. Some impose the measure fitfully, hoping for the curve to flatten quickly. Others have problematically increased the number of days in which the measure is relaxed despite absence of proof that the measure never worked in the first instance.

More shockingly, at a time the country itself and, yes, the presidential panel set up to counter the disease have become persuaded about the wisdom of significantly easing restrictions to nothing more than night curfew, at a time when they are contemplating re-opening schools, airports and places of worship under certain guidelines, and are in the process of reflating the economy and seeking ways to expand job opportunities, a few states have kept stubbornly to lockdowns.

If it is of any help to those adamant states, they should know that federal authorities and the rest of the world are engaged in finding the best ways to reopen their societies and economies. Everyone is now persuaded that lockdown was a panicky measure to adopt. It never even worked partially, at least not anything like observing physical distancing measure, frequently using alcohol-based hand sanitisers, wearing face masks, limiting social interactions, and congregating in worship centres in huge numbers. If the lockdown states in Nigeria are unconvinced about the wastefulness of their lockdown measure, they should wait until they take a good look at their finances in the weeks ahead.

By Barometer

Two days ago, Nigeria’s Fourth Republic clocked 21 uninterrupted years of parliamentary rule. It is a record since the First Republic.

If that record is to be kept and extended, the country’s political elite must find ways of redefining their nation’s politics and laws. They must also find the ingenuity to envision a great republic that approximates civic culture and make life worth living for the people.

Twenty-one years is a record, though undoubtedly a long and fitful period of extended rule in the hands of elected officials.

But the unanswered question is whether Nigeria is enjoying democracy or plain civil rule? No elected or appointed official, indeed no political party with representatives in parliament, will describe Nigeria today as lacking in democratic fundamentals.

They will say that though the system is not perfect, it has gone beyond civil rule and has satisfied most of the criteria that define democracy. They will, however, be guilty of hyperbole.

On a continuum, Nigeria is closer to the characteristics of civil rule than democracy.

The evidence seem to suggest that the political class has an incomplete understanding of the principles of democracy and a difficult relationship with the demands of a democratic polity, whether it concerns the rule of law, the independence of the parliament, and the impartiality of the judiciary — a difficulty they have struggled over the years, and especially in the past one week, to address.

It is encouraging that the Fourth Republic has lasted so long, though in somewhat leprous and epileptic conditions.

But far better to live with political leprosy than to re-engage with military rule, which for decades demeaned and impoverished the country.

By Barometer

As if it mattered, many commentators from the North have indicated that the hordes of young northerners migrating southward are not almajirai but youths looking for opportunities.

But southern governors are up in arms over the avalanche, and are cross with their counterpart governors from the North who make light of the problem.

Northern governors insist that Nigeria is one country, and youths as well as adults can go anywhere to seek opportunity. Southern governors, however, argue that the South has enough problems of their own than to open their doors to welcome more problems.

Read Also: Proprietors attack Northern govs over mass repatriation of almajirai

They had taken steps to limit population growth and structured their states and communities in such a way as to avert the crisis being witnessed today, they averred.

Beyond the linguistic conundrum of defining itinerant youths and almajirai, a class of urchins abandoned to the care of quranic teachers and expected to beg their way and fend for themselves through school, northern governors who complain about the South erecting barriers must begin to reconsider whether it is proper to shift their burdens to others.

It is true the itinerant youths are not alamjirai, but whether youths or not, those swamping the South from the North are putting a strain on the resources of the South.

A change of attitude has become indispensable.

As northern governors themselves have begun to discover in the expulsion of almajirai back to their home states in the North, no state has unlimited resources to take care of other people’s problems, one country or not.

By Barometer

Moments after the Nigerian government, through the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, announced that the controversial team of Chinese medical experts in Nigeria was given only 30-day visa, the Chinese embassy in Nigeria disclosed that the team was actually given a three-month visa. Who is lying? Surely this can’t be one of those subterfuges in language and logic suggesting that the truth lies somewhere between the Nigerian assertion and Chinese refutation. Someone definitely must be lying.

At Tuesday’s PTF briefing, Internal Affairs minister, Rauf Aregbesola, with a smirk on his face, and believing that he had caught pressmen at their own devices, had told the public that the 15-man Chinese team arrived Nigeria on April 8 with a 30-day visa, but were stranded in Nigeria because of inability to get a flight from Nigeria. Not so, said the press officer of the Chinese Embassy, Sun Xaixiong, who insisted that the Chinese experts were given a three-month visa. According to Mr Sun, the team was stranded in Nigeria because “commercial flights to China were not opened yet”.

Right from the beginning of the Chinese medical team saga, neither the Chinese nor Nigerian version of the visit has been consistent. The PTF, through the Health minister, Osagie Ehanire, and others had always argued that they were not privy to the visit of the medical experts organised by the China Civil Engineering Construction Cooperation(CCECC) in Nigeria mainly to attend to the medical needs of the staff of that company. Nigeria would merely seize the opportunity of the visit to make the team share knowledge and expertise with their Nigerian medical counterparts. But they came with a 16-ton medical equipment.

Between April 8 when the Chinese experts arrived Nigeria and last Tuesday, the Nigerian and Chinese versions of the team’s visit had so morphed that it is impossible to describe it in any consistent and coherent colour or shape. Not only did Nigerians denounce the visit, despite the adamant interest of the Nigerian government in welcoming the Chinese experts, they also, through the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), resolved not to welcome them into Nigerian hospitals or allow them interact with patients. In summary, the Nigerian position concerning the visit was that “The Chinese medics will be providing technical support to Nigeria in its fight against COVID-19, and also sharing experiential strategies of how their country curtailed the spread of the virus.” For the Chinese, the Executive Director of China Civil Engineering Construction Cooperation(CCECC), Jacques Liao, had insisted that “the primary purpose of the team is to provide CCECC employees with critical and necessary healthcare.”

What a relief then that, last Tuesday, Mr Aregbesola finally disclosed some of the key assignments of the Chinese team, a disclosure that conflicts with the original position of the Nigerian government. Said Mr Aragbesola: “Indeed 15 Chinese nationals came into Nigeria on April 8. From everything we have heard and said, they were here on the bill of CCECC, a Chinese company working in Nigeria, doing some work for us in several places. And in conjunction with some Nigerian companies, they agreed to support us with efforts to respond to the pandemic. At Idu, they participated in retrofitting and equipping the isolation centre there. They equally worked on the dome project that was handled by the NNPC consortium in conjunction with THISDAY. Those are the locations in which they came to work.”

It took many weeks to get a fair picture of how and why the Chinese medical team came to Nigeria, though it required navigating a warren of lies and half-truths. At a point, the Health minister was so exasperated with the probing questions of Nigerian reporters that he blurted out that he would no longer welcome any question on the subject. Well, Mr Aregbesola has answered some of the pesky additional questions, only that unfortunately, his answer also contained half-truths. Though a clearer picture of the Chinese visit has come out, there is little doubt that the Nigerian government was determined not to say the whole truth. Indeed, they were probably responsible for the half-truths that ensnared the Chinese.

Hopefully, sometime soon, it will be clear just how many months visa the Chinese team were given, whether 30 days or three months. Nigeria is enamoured of incremental truths. But there is something both the Nigerian and Chinese governments will never be able to put to rest: why the medical experts are still in Nigeria. At a point Dr Ehanire said he didn’t know where they were and what they were doing. But if they were retrofitting an isolation centre in Abuja, surely, he should know. It is curious that the Internal Affairs minister knew and the Health minister did not.

It is also perhaps too much to hope that someone would explain why the Chinese team was able to get a chartered flight to Nigeria on April 8 despite closure of airports, and they can’t get a chartered flight back to China while the closure subsists. All the doubts and lies, not to talk of the irresponsible manner the Nigerian authority shoved the visit down the throats of the electorate, indicate how poorly developed Nigerian democracy still is. If votes count, and the electorate were enlightened, no government could take the people on a merry-go-round of duplicitous stories that do not and can never add up. After all, when the Chinese team arrived Nigeria on April 8, the country had 276 confirmed cases of the coronavirus disease and six deaths. By Friday, May 22, the country had skyrocketed into 6,677 cases and 200 deaths. Who knows, Nigerian officials may yet argue that had the Chinese not come, the situation might have been much worse. Very artful people!