Category: Idowu Akinlotan

By Idowu Akinlotan

The poor management of the coronavirus disease in Kano State is the clearest example of the confusion that has overtaken the fight against the disease in Nigeria. There are indications that almost as soon as the disease, otherwise called COVID-19, berthed in the country, it quickly progressed to community transmission.

And while it has been clear for more than a week or two to everyone who has had contact with the disease that the so-called strange deaths filling Kano cemeteries was related to coronavirus, the state has both lived in denial and approached the disease rather lackadaisically and shambolically.

The consequence is that more people are getting infected or dying of the disease, including the high and mighty, and mendicant almajirai who have been turned into national vectors of the disease.

There is little anyone can do now to mitigate the poor management of the disease in the states. The federal government was lax at the beginning in rising up smartly and quickly to forestall the outbreak of the disease.

And while it has seemed to work hard to curb the disease, its effort has been too little, too late and barely effective. In some northern states, the crisis has become truly gargantuan. Some of the governors are hysterical (Rivers), others are living in outright denial (Kano), and others are simply somnolent (Gombe).

All the other states, not minding the theatrical Kogi and Cross River States, are one shade or the other of the three archetypal responses. The point the country must now lament is that in nearly all states, not excluding the federal level, voters had deployed weak and foolish yardsticks in electing their leaders.

They are, therefore, stuck with their incompetent leaders and must find ways to ensure that their president and governors do not tip them into the abyss.

Take for instance Kano. Given its huge population and socio-cultural circumstances, not only was the state unprepared for COVID-19 outbreak, its reaction was horrifyingly slow and uninspiring.

It needed to treat the health crisis confronting it seriously, particularly the many deaths experienced in its cities, instead the state has petulantly described the deaths as strange, excoriated those who say the state got its diagnosis wrong, and has for weeks incredibly been unable to find the cause(s) of the problem.

Kano’s crisis is not helped by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, which have both failed to definitively determine whether the so-called strange deaths in the state were related or not related to the virus.

How hard could that be? They have prevaricated over verbal autopsies and managed to evade telling the truth. Why could they not exhume some of the bodies to do the autopsies? Are these people serious at all? Do they think they have the luxury of doing nothing or covering up the problem?

It is shocking that neither Kano nor NCDC, nor yet the PTF has seemed to appreciate the urgency of finding out what is amiss in Kano — and now Jigawa too — and doing something about it.

It is true the PTF and NCDC have stepped up their interventions in the state, but the figures of infections and deaths dished out by the government about the Kano coronavirus crisis seem to reflect collusion and deliberate attempt to underplay the problem.

By Friday, Kano was said to have over 500 infected people and about 13 deaths. Really? Yet, this is the same state whose almajiri population, as reflected by states to which they have been ‘repatriated’, indicate anything between 30 percent and 50 percent infection rate.

This is the same state whose notable elites are dying like flies. That the NCDC, PTF and Kano have not deemed it fit to come clean over the crisis is a reflection of either incompetence or collusion. It also dangerously reflects the more worrisome fact that no one seems to be anchoring the national response to COVID-19.

Responding to the disease and its effects goes beyond PTF daily briefings or frantic NCDC pacing around the country. Both panel and agency are expected to tackle the disease, its spread, treatment and any other measure needed to mitigate its consequences.

But there is a social side to the pandemic, a religious side, and more importantly, and economic side. It is not within the purview of the NCDC to find solutions to all the other spinoffs of the disease.

And no matter how hard working the PTF is, and despite their claims to the contrary, it is also not within their purview to resolve all the other tangential issues that arise from the rampage of the plague.

It is strictly a presidential affair, a crisis the president must speak to directly, manage directly, and resolve directly and forthrightly. For more than two weeks, the presidency has been unable to fill the vacancy created by the death of Abba Kyari, the president’s chief of staff.

It is not anybody’s fault that the chief of staff’s office has become the fulcrum of government. But since the president has made it so, he ought to fill the vacancy very quickly. Even if he makes a mistake, he can always correct himself.

There are after all no constitutional limits to how many times he can appoint a chief of staff. So far, a quaint feeling pervades the country that no one is really in control. No? Well, then, let the president prove the country wrong.

Kano State has handled COVID-19 outbreak very poorly, like most other states. So, too, has the federal government. But the crisis is just beginning.

Nigeria may theoretically be a federation; however, it is clear that there is an urgent need for someone who can personify the war against the disease, someone who can see the country’s problems beyond the disease, and someone who knows how to coax the states, or even cajole them, into coalescing their efforts into the federal government’s unifying COVID-19 battle themes.

No, no one is advocating the martial measure of locking the entire country down or issuing stentorian orders that are half-baked and poorly conceived.

Nor is anyone asking the presidency to ignore the peculiarities of individual states. In fact the first set of lockdowns inflicted on Lagos, Ogun and FCT were misconceived. So, too, is the one slammed on Kano, which is sadly being executed desultorily.

As experience has shown, the earlier lockdowns did little to stifle or slow the spread of the virus. On the contrary, it was the economy that was stifled, the people impoverished, and the populace exposed to the unfeeling and short-sighted comparisons between death and virus abatement.

What was required was finding a workable and healthy balance between harsh measures and easing of restrictions. Not only did lockdowns not serve the purpose for which they were meant, they inflicted the collateral damage of slowing the economy almost to a halt.

Wages have plummeted, companies and factories are shut, and jobs in their millions have been lost. In the midst of all this, the federal government has been spectacularly remiss and even incompetent in distributing palliatives, and have done precious little to save jobs or prevent companies from shutting down.

More scandalously, both the PTF and the NCDC have threatened to recommend another round of lockdown if Nigerians do not adhere strictly to the rules and regulations governing the easing of the lockdown. Nonsense.

The government has the responsibility to police the regulations guiding the easing of the lockdown. They cannot push their inefficiency to the harassed and hungry populace.

They have been unable to police the interstate lockdowns, and their security and law enforcement agents have turned various national checkpoints into extortion rackets. It is necessary for the public to cooperate with the government to ensure the successful easing of the lockdowns.

But it is the responsibility of the government to ensure compliance. They should take their responsibilities seriously instead of threatening the public.

If there was a central figure anchoring the COVID-19 war, and if he is intelligent enough to weigh all the options and factors involved in the war, he would recognise that a balance must be created between the measures and the economy because in the final analysis, hunger will spur disobedience, no matter how foolishly analysts compare war situations to COVID-19.

The government has hinted at a second lockdown; but it is doubtful whether they have done any analysis of the first set of lockdowns, what they gained from them, and what lessons they have learnt to get the best out of a lockdown and make the measure less painful.

They are hinting at a second lockdown, perhaps a national one this time; but have they honestly fathomed the impact on the economy? Oil prices have collapsed; Nigeria is unable to sell its oil even at a discount; national revenue is shrinking; more companies are closing, and the informal sector has all but collapsed sending many into poverty and hunger without all the safety nets of countries which have enacted general lockdowns.

Between the first lockdown and now, the country has only managed a little over 10,000 tests compared with many other smaller countries which have done tens of thousands of tests.

If a few thousands of tests were carried out during the first lockdown, and testing is one of the most powerful tools of fighting the disease, what does the government hope to do with a second lockdown without a corresponding significant increase in testing? Reagents are needed, so too are test kits.

Until a few days ago, all reagents were imported. Even now, it is not clear just how many test kits the country has, or how much reagents they have in store. In the beginning, the country should have developed its own test kits, rather than depend on importation, and manufactured its reagents rather than scour the globe for the materials.

It also ought to assemble its scientists to find a cure for a disease that should in the first instance not be too difficult to tackle. Instead, its parliament is engaged in the ludicrous exercise of concocting an infectious diseases bill to regulate its quarantine system, and the government is sending S.O.S to other countries to donate ventilators that have become suspect in the increasing mortality of COVID-19 patients.

The government also shamelessly justified the importation of Chinese medical experts, their new business partner before whom they genuflect. Some countries have subjected imported test kits to reliability tests and found them wanting.

What has Nigeria done? Are tests in these parts infallible? What of the cures? How many have their scientists suggested, especially in light of higher death figures per population of infected people?

The COVID-19 war is a huge and sensitive one. The country should spare nothing in fighting it, and governors must be encouraged to do their best.

But states like Kogi have trivialised the fight; others like Rivers have whooped for war instead of a scientific and less hysterical approach; Kano has shunned reason, lived in denial and appeared overwhelmed; and many other states, assured that revenue allocations would come from Abuja every month, have needlessly grounded their local economies, administered and extended lockdowns, and drawn an inverse relationship between death and lockdown.

There is abundant lack of competence at the states level, and this deficiency is not helped by the inability of the federal government to think for the country.

The threat of re-imposing lockdown or hinging its extension, as Ogun has just done for another week, must not be deployed as punishment for civil disobedience. Ogun State even suggested that lifting or extending the lockdown was in the hands of the people, not the government.

That is an appalling quid pro quo. Unfortunately, the federal government seems inclined towards the same specious reasoning. It must, however, be reiterated that the government has the resources to enforce compliance. It should go ahead and discharge its obligations.

Restricting and endangering the livelihoods of a people, which lockdowns imply, not only speaks to a sorry lack of imagination and excessive dependence on federal allocations by state governments, it also reflects incompetence.

The months ahead are fraught with economic disruptions for Nigeria, especially if oil prices and global demand for the commodity continue to stagnate or regress. To compound the coming crisis with wholesale restrictions and dislocations of the informal sector through the mindless execution of lockdowns is to predispose the country to large-scale instability.

Even without lockdowns, there is little to suggest that the country can successfully navigate around the coming turbulence. Current attitude to lockdown, in the face of lethargic execution of other equally appropriate measures, is courting unmanageable trouble.

Lagos profited little or nothing from its five-week lockdown, and despite being baited by unenlightened public discourse to countenance the measure again, has wisely refused to contemplate or speak about it. It should resist the temptation.

It is not clear what the federal opinion of another lockdown is, or whether anyone is even thinking for them, or that such thoughts are deep and superior and convincing.

Hopefully, the feds will also realise that except they are prepared to test millions of Nigerians in a week, and give tangible succour to the vulnerable beyond the disgraceful tokenism they have so far implemented, a lockdown is a terrible waste of time.

The federal government now has only a few options left, obviously due to its poor management of the crisis since the index case landed in Nigeria on February 27.

Lockdown is not one of the few options. Social distancing and its concomitant effects on weddings, clubbing, funerals etc., face mask for all it is worth, reorienting work place culture to lessen crowding, hand washing and use of sanitisers, and above all testing, isolation, contact tracing and adequate local and innovative treatment should do the trick. The virus will abate in due time.

Hopefully, the country will have learnt some lessons from the crisis, chief among which is how indispensable it is to examine the emotions, temperament and qualification of candidates for high office before electing them.

To repeat the mistake of consistently electing wrong people into office, as has been done since the beginning of the Fourth Republic, because of ethnicity or religion, or because voters are beguiled by their style and manners, is to make the country eternally vulnerable.

By Idowu Akinlotan

In fact, the lockdown should never have happened in the first instance, even though, given its global seductiveness, it was all but inevitable. To argue against its imposition in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic was to court the wrath of those who equate its absence with encouraging genocide or mass suicide. Unlike other issues, the debate on whether the unalleviated spread of the coronavirus disease should persuade the government to continue or discontinue its lockdown measure is not as confused as the origins of the virus itself.

Five weeks ago, only two states and Abuja came under lockdown. Today, virtually all the 36 states are under one degree of lockdown or the other, with interstate movements of persons and non-essential goods prohibited. But just as fast as the lockdown measure beguiled Nigeria’s policy makers in the first few panicky and frenetic weeks of the virus, easing the lockdown has now also become a global and irresistible catchphrase.

The arguments of both the proponents and opponents of the measure are fairly straightforward. Those who support lockdown acknowledge that the measure has its expiry date, but warn that easing the measure now is premature because the disease could flare up again and continue its relentless and destructive march. They cite examples of countries, including Ghana, which they argue has prematurely eased the lockdown and is confronted by flare-ups, adding that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has cautioned against prematurely lifting the lockdown.

They also liken the disease to war, inundating everybody with the apocalyptic histories of savage epidemics, particularly the 1918 Spanish flu, and suggesting that it is better to stay quarantined and hungry, than to face the dangerous and irrevocable finality of dropping dead in the streets like flies, with the surviving unenthusiastic about burying their dead. For Nigeria, the advocates add, the country is yet to see the peak of the disease, let alone witness the so-called flattening of the curve or its irreversible abatement.

Opponents of the measure are ironically not united in their reasons for opposing the lockdown. One group agrees with the initial lockdown, which they say was necessary, but argues that the country could not bear more than a few weeks of the harsh measure. They rest their advocacy mainly on the unworkable structure of the Nigerian economy and the society’s lack of advancement or sophistication, thus making it hard for the government to palliate the sufferings of the vulnerable.

The second group of opponents insist that a lockdown, as attractive as it may seem, and with all the pictorial quietness and drama it paints and presents, is fundamentally and theoretically flawed. A lockdown, they commonsensically declared, destroys the economy and livelihood of the largest section of the society, whether that society is advanced or underdeveloped. They also point at the industrialised West which has eased the lockdown despite still grappling with the mountainous impact of the disease.

By last weekend, following the decision by President Muhammadu Buhari to ease the lockdown in Lagos, Ogun and Abuja after five weeks, and despite the rising number of infections in those areas and the flare ups in a number of other states, including Kano, the debate on the appropriateness of the lockdown measure had intensified. The debate coalesced principally into two broad categories: those in favour of the measure and those against it.

The supporters of the measure paint a scary picture of the disease spreading more ominously and recording bigger harvests of deaths. It is not clear how the Buhari presidency came to its conclusions; but if the deaths from COVID-19 were to intensify on a scale that shakes their confidence and alarms the populace, another regime of lockdown could be imposed in a matter of weeks, maybe even sooner than later. Opponents of lockdown, however, tentatively won this round of debate. Not willing to provoke anyone but eager to let bad enough alone, they have kept their peace and spoken very little, hoping that they had presented enough sensible security and economic arguments to persuade the government to seek other means of reining in the disease.

It seems, overall, that the government reluctantly reached its conclusions, perhaps swayed by security and economic reasons. But they have continued to cast wary eyes on the rising death figures, not to say the community spread of the disease, of which Kano is tragically the exemplification of both. In presenting his position to the nation last Monday on easing the lockdown, just as when he announced both the first lockdown and the extension, President Buhari was neither convincing nor inspiring. Indeed on none of the three occasions did the president present resounding arguments for or against lockdown.

He did not substantially acknowledge the security arguments, nor did he indicate a full grasp of the economic arguments for and against the measure. He tried to empathise with the people, more than 75 percent of whom operate in the informal/ small scale enterprises sector, and claimed to appreciate their anguish and losses. But even that appreciation, like his three national broadcasts in their entirety, was too mechanical, officious and unconvincing. There is, therefore, really nothing persuasive about the president’s statements since the virus made landfall to warrant an ironclad belief that the government knows its onions and cannot be tossed around by the exigencies of the disease or stupefied by the short to medium run increase in casualty figures. In short, the president is not immune to being swayed one way or the other in the weeks or days ahead.

Kano embodies that presidential vacillation. If the reasons for easing the lockdown in Lagos, Ogun and Abuja have anything to do with security threats and, more crucially, the loss of livelihoods by a majority of Nigerians, the president would not have imposed a lockdown on Kano, regardless of the panic displayed by the leaders of that populous and generally temperamental northern state. Even though supporters of lockdown argue that the measure helped Lagos, Ogun and Abuja to limit the spread of the disease and keep the gradient of the casualty figures fairly gentle, there is absolutely no proof that without a lockdown, the casualty figures would have been significantly higher.

Lagos for instance was already executing varying and graduated degrees of lockdown before the president’s brusque intervention. There is evidence to show that Lagos factored in the security and medical factors in implementing its own strategies, and had achieved some measure of success which it needed to build on. The federal government factored in nothing, but believed, without research and evidence, that a lockdown, the global Cinderella thought to be the magic bullet, would halt the slide to chaos. As everyone now knows, neither the deaths from coronavirus nor its spread has abated or responded positively to the lockdown measure.

By locking down Kano, despite experience not supporting the efficacy of that measure, the federal government somehow thinks they can put a lid on the unexplained deaths in the state and control the other more visible and explicable deaths probably triggered by the pandemic. But Governor Abdullahi Ganduje has remonstrated with the federal government to ease the lockdown on account of the hunger ravaging the populace and the stifling of small businesses threatened by lack of production and patronage. Did he and the president not know this before oiling their weapons and firing their guns? The state is a lethal brew of poverty, unregulated and poorly structured small businesses, ignorant masses and exploding population.

Kano, like other states which refused to anticipate a crisis like COVID-19, nor prepared for the future in terms of town planning, healthcare facilities, population control, harnessing their large population by giving them the skills needed to thrive in this modern era, and emplacement of frugal and visionary governance, has been thrust savagely into the fiery claws of reckoning. The governor is right to suggest that Kano can’t endure a lockdown for as long and as stoically as Lagos and others managed. But the state has an unforgiving disease to fight, and despite Abuja pouring money and resources into the state, the situation will get out of hand if the federal government does not in fact double and intensify its help. Like other states and cities in Nigeria, time has caught up with Kano, and they are discovering, again like Lagos and others before them, that a lockdown is not as easy to administer nor as magically rewarding as the government has romanticised.

Given the political health of Nigeria, the structure of the economy, the level of poverty, and the global downturn certain to impact negatively on Nigeria’s main revenue source, a lockdown is a recipe for chaos. Global recession, which COVID-19 is predisposing the world economy to, is bad enough. Having a feeble and trammelled economy like that of Nigeria which derives its sustenance from fuelling the world’s industrial engines and subordinating its existence to the breath in the nostrils of others is obviously courting disaster every time a crisis from outside strikes. The only way to mitigate the instant and traumatising effect of the looming economic disaster is to keep the country’s informal sector revving for as long as possible, hoping that it will help cushion and weaken the coming tsunami before it makes landfall.

Nigerian leaders have now begun to see that the world is moving away from lockdown, and have embraced this move, probably without fully knowing why, or even if they know, without being fully convinced. They adopted lockdown when others did; now, almost by rote, they are easing up as others are doing, with the arguments for both positions hard to rationalise. It is not only important for Nigerian leaders to know why they must ape the big powers, they must also appraise the new measures presented before them, and see which ones can be adopted or adapted.

More importantly, it is a tragic reflection of the poverty of governance and lack of national self-confidence that when COVID-19 berthed in Lagos and Ogun states, Nigeria immediately began to look outside rather than inwards, to the West and the Chinese instead of Nigerian scientists, as the virus began to panic and plague the country. They should have looked inwards to develop their own unique methods and apparatuses of fighting the disease, as a few other African countries are doing, pool their scientists together to find a cure, as they are now just persuading themselves to do, and repose confidence in restructuring and fine-tuning their administrative systems to enable them respond adequately and confidently to crises of this kind and all kinds, particularly a health crisis that has embarrassed and enfeebled the world’s leading economies.

It is evident that many world leaders, from Donald Trump of the United States to Boris Johnson of Britain, and from Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil to Vladimir Putin of Russia, are ill-equipped to respond to this kind of existential crisis partly because they are made of false and hesitant mettle than first imagined, and have surrendered to all forms of hysteria, self-doubt, coarseness, propaganda and histrionics. This crisis has exposed them all.

Unfortunately for Nigeria, the coronavirus crisis has coincided with the tremors convulsing the country’s leadership since the past few weeks. To be able to respond forcefully and sensibly to the COVID-19 crisis and the inexorable economic woes looming in the horizon, Nigeria would require the best brains in the highest office in the land, and still have the option of calling upon the services of other great brains at short notice.

Partly because of the country’s leadership culture, which floats on ethnic and religious ballasts, there has been no scientific or structured attempt to respond to the virus beyond empanelling a few teams of admittedly hard working public officials whose activities however manifest a certain lack of adroitness. It would be a tragedy to respond to the coming economic woes in the same shambolic manner as they have faced and demeaned other salient national issues.

One step Nigerian leaders must not take is to shut down the economy in the guise of fighting the virus even before the inescapable global economic downturn hits the country like a hurricane. They must be wary of the dubious argument that suggests that lockdown presupposes fewer deaths. Not only have previous lockdowns not proved this hypothesis, the argument is itself unhelpful, insensitive and elitist. Other measures, which are gradually being emphasised and administered by Lagos and the federal government itself, should be encouraged and given time to work.

These measures will take cognisance of the nature and course of the pandemic and mitigate its social and economic effects, even in the face of rising death figures in the short to medium run. It requires courage, tenacity and intellect. Officials should not be of double mind in confronting the ogre. The government is right to ease the lockdown since it cannot obviously alleviate the sufferings of the vulnerable as everyone hoped; it should therefore stay the course because the alternative is too grim to contemplate, not to talk of endure.

By Idowu Akinlotan

When Muazu Magaji, an engineer and until two Saturdays ago Kano State Works and Infrastructure commissioner, took to his Facebook page to pass subtle but obviously disagreeable comments on the passing of President Muhammadu Buhari’s chief of staff, Abba Kyari, he could not have been so naive as not to know that his post had become a red rag to a bull.

Not only did he stir a hornet’s nest, the governor of the state, Abdullahi Ganduje, promptly relieved him of his position. Until his attention was drawn to it, it is unclear whether the governor read his commissioner’s brutally frank comments on Mallam Kyari. It is even less clear why Mr Magaji commented so hastily, and why he thought his comments would not attract punitive responses from either Kano or Abuja. Mr Magaji’s sacking illustrates vividly the perils of candid obituaries.

Though he has tried to put a spin on the cryptic messages he passed on the late presidential aide’s person and style, and has indicated how remorseful he felt that those messages were misunderstood, he left a hint in his comments to show what he regretted more in the post: the misinterpretation rather than the messages.

Except investigative reporters avail the public of the true feelings of the state government, there is not enough in their official statement relieving Mr Magaji of his appointment to indicate whether they thought he mirrored what many radical Kanawa politicians privately felt about Mallam Kyari, especially his style and his quiet but imperial mix of conservatism and pragmatism.

Kano’s Information commissioner, Muhammad Garba, told the public that Mr Magaji’s removal resulted from his “unguarded utterances against the person of the late Chief of Staff to the President, Malam Abba Kyari.” As he put it, “The action of a public servant, personal or otherwise, reflects on the government, and, therefore, the Ganduje administration would not tolerate people in official capacities engaging in personal vendetta or otherwise. Mr Kyari led a life worthy of emulation by serving his country to the best of his ability.”

The media is well aware of the perils of unguarded social media comments. Newspapers and electronic media have been put in trouble by the carefree comments of some of their staff members, many of whom in the heat of writing their ‘candid’ impressions quite easily forget that they are quasi representatives of their media establishments. This lesson was also lost on one of the sons of Kaduna State governor, Bello Nasir el-Rufai, when he took to Twitter to belabour a Cross Riverian, whom he assumed was Igbo, for dismissing the Buhari presidency as incompetent and absentee.

In the heat of the exchange between the two, the sufficiently provoked younger el-Rufai made the cardinal mistake of threatening to gang-rape the offender’s mother, prompting many critics to suggest that he could not threaten what he was not capable of. Then he capped his post with snide and exceedingly prurient ethnic aside on the Igbo people. Worse, Kaduna State’s first lady and mother of Mallam Bello, Hadiza el-Rufai, hedged for days before eventually disavowing her son’s unacceptable behaviour and apologising on his behalf.

Social media is riddled with landmines. It neither forgets nor forgives. It calls to remembrance sins and offences of years past, and it tears to ribbons reputations carefully garnered over decades. Only last year, at a book launch in Abuja, the senior el-Rufai promised social media bullies and vagrants that the long arm of the law would catch up with them despite being hundreds of kilometres away from where the consequences of their provocative comments are felt.

He had said: “We should not confuse freedom of expression with freedom to kill. If you tweet something that is fake or you tweet something that is reckless without checking and it leads to the death of people, then you deserve to be tried at least as an accessory before or after the fact of murder…You cannot sit in Port Harcourt or Lagos and start posting stuff that leads to societal instability in Kaduna and we let you go. We will file charges, we will go and collect you from Port Harcourt or Lagos and bring you before a judge in Kaduna and the judge will decide whether you are guilty. We’ve done that two or three times. The people we have done this to are still being prosecuted.”

Gov Ganduje has sacked his Works and Infrastructure commissioner for his indiscretion. Even after the Kaduna State first lady had apologised on behalf of her family and son, women groups have continued to campaign for the younger el-Rufai to be charged in court for violating both the Cybercrimes (Prohibition) Act, 2015 and the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act, 2015.

The campaign is still on, and it is not clear how it would be resolved, or whether it should be resolved outside the courts. Mr Magaji has wisely tried to bury the controversy that surrounded his post on the late Mallam Kyari. He has written a lengthy and unconvincing public apology that tried to pour balm on the injured feelings of the grieving Kyari family, and he has reiterated his loyalty to the Kano governor, despite the sack. The matter is unlikely to go beyond that point in the short to medium term, despite the candour of his views on the late presidential aide, and despite his poor attempt at self-abnegation.

Mr Magaji’s Facebook post, particularly his subtle character reference of Mallam Kyari, was thought to be in bad taste in some circles. But at a time when many roaring tributes to the late presidential aide had suffused the media, it is reassuring that a contrary opinion of the deceased, as a man of many parts viewed from different and hostile perspectives by so many people and interest groups, was ever penned from unlikely quarters. The Kanawa are sometimes controversially regarded as culturally frank and politically radical. It is, therefore, significant that someone of the rank of a commissioner wrote frankly about what he thought of the late Mallam Kyari. Mr Magaji insists he was misunderstood and his narrative twisted by mischief makers, but there is little elbow room to really interpret his post other than literally.

Here are a few of his comments found particularly offensive, as reproduced by a newspaper based in the North: (1) “Abba Kyari is no ordinary citizen. He amassed so much power that decided the fate of my nation and its people…Hence his death is never personal.” (2) “Nigeria is bigger than any individual…While praying for the president’s late support staff…Ours is to prevent a repeat of his non-accountable, domineering era!” (3) “There is a world of difference between a good person and a good leader…Leadership is an aggregated quality of mass empathy, not personal favours!” (4) “May Allah heal Abba Kyari…But may Allah not return him as Chief of Staff…PMB needs to be his own man.” (5) “It’s very important we put things in perspective so that we can save our system from punitive unconstitutional usurpers in the future! Democracy & democratic equity does not by itself strive.. It must be guarded and protected… One person, just one person can set a dangerous precedence! When you are all done with the pretence and crocodile tears, we will do a review in overriding interest of the Nation and its people!”

Denounced for being unfeeling, Mr Magaji, while not denying the comments attributed to him, declared in somewhat tortured prose : “As a Muslim and a patriotic Nigerian, I was only misunderstood by people to think that I celebrated Kyari’s death; the truth is I did not. Not only that, I made several posts mourning Kyari’s death on my same Facebook account and through my special assistants, but the general public couldn’t commend such or claim I did such post, rather tend to capitalize on a full-phrase post that is given another set of definition and direction as well as negativity in other to tarnish my reputation as a member of H.E. Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje Administration.”

He continued: “On the other hand, Nigeria equally has the opportunity to restructure the office of the Chief of staff, where I called Mr President to ensure that we can (turn) the pandemic challenges into more strengths, by decentralising the power of the office for a rapid administrative flow, which over and above anything, our constitutional democracy is meant to achieve… They (critics) twisted the narrative with explanation completely taken out of context and lacing it with religious and cultural connotations that made it necessary for our principal the governor to show leadership and solidarity with the dead by relieving me off my position in Kano State as his Commissioner of Works and Infrastructure.”

Since then, other notable personalities have written tributes to the late Mallam Kyari, most of them extolling his virtues, but managing in the same breath to present an incomplete picture of his strengths and weaknesses, a picture redone and reanimated by Mr Magaji’s portraiture. The tributes written by both the president and his nephew, Mamman Daura, the former editor who mentored Mallam Kyari and is regarded as very influential in the corridors of power, have been the archetype. The president describes his late aide as the “very best of us…made of the stuff that makes Nigeria great.”

In his tribute, the president indicated he was aware of the criticisms levelled against Mallam Kyari, in response to which he rose in instinctive defence. He did not indicate any shortcoming of his aide worth mentioning. Said President Buhari: “…There was never any question Abba would bring his first-rate skills and newly acquired world-class knowledge back to Nigeria  which he did  immediately upon graduation. Whilst possessing the sharpest legal and organisational mind, Abba’s true focus was always the development of infrastructure and the assurance of security for the people of this nation he served so faithfully. For he knew that without both in tandem there can never be the development of the respectful society and vibrant economy that all Nigerian citizens deserve. In political life, Abba never sought elective office for himself. Rather, he set himself against the view and conduct of two generations of Nigeria’s political establishment  who saw corruption as an entitlement and its practice a by-product of possessing political office. Becoming my Chief of Staff in 2015, he strove quietly and without any interest in publicity or personal gain to implement my agenda…” In this fulsome tribute, said many critics, is embedded the reason the president was judged to have abdicated the throne to his aide.

But Mallam Daura, a former editor and managing director of the New Nigerian Newspapers, was even more effusive in his tribute. “Malam Abba Kyari was a man blessed with mountainous gifts and uncommon attributes of intelligence, diligence, hard work, loyalty to friends and worthy causes,” began Mallam Daura. “One could exhaust superlatives to do him full justice…Despite holding firm views, his advice to the President was dispassionate, even-handed and did not hide unpleasant facts, in the best traditions of public service. In point of intellect, he stood above all Ministers and Special Advisers in this government. But personally he was modest, ever willing to learn, ever willing to help others.” Neither the president nor Mallam Daura resorted to the social media nor made snide remarks about the departed presidential aide. They will not recant anything, as Mr Magaji has seemed compelled to do, no matter what anybody says about the tributes, whether regarding the president’s superlative description of his late aide as “the very best of us” or Mallam Daura’s extraordinary ranking of the departed as having “stood above all ministers and special advisers in this government” on point of intellect. And the ministers can go eat their hearts out.

Perhaps now Mr Magaji can better understand why Mallam Kyari seemed to loom very large over the Buhari administration, why he could do no wrong as it were, and why all the powers of the president, if not the reins of the presidency entirely, seemed to have been ceded to him when he held sway. The former Kano State commissioner was baffled by the accretion of power in the hands of Mallam Kyari. He knew nothing. In the president’s circle, the late aide was gifted and incomparable, probably reverenced more than anything else for his clear baritone voice, measured cadence, awe-inspiring eclecticism, global exposure, and telling inscrutability. Had he lived through the entire frame of the Buhari presidency, no one would have threatened the position of an aide who was expected to deify his boss and mentor, but who was paradoxically deified by them for his intellect and parsimoniousness. Didn’t the first lady and the national security adviser know about this presidential predilection before they attempted lecturing him during their tiffs? Mr Magaji could be forgiven for staying far away from the main theatre of power and scribbling furiously on his Facebook wall; but what could anyone say of the hostile denizens in Aso Villa who, not being ignorant of the shenanigans of the villa, decided to bait the tiger?

Most Nigerians will probably gravitate towards the former Kano commissioner’s dismissive characterisation of Mallam Kyari. But they will be kicking against the stone and risking their health, as Mr Magaji has found out to his detriment. Opinion is unevenly divided on the late presidential aide, and will remain so well after his replacement has been found. The new man will, however, be torn between following the footsteps of Mallam Kyari or being his own man, between satisfying the patrician longings of the president and his nephew or meeting the country at its devolutionary point of need. How well the replacement walks a tightrope will in fact determine whether the president and his friends see the remaining years of his presidency as a dreadful ordeal or a refreshing conclusion to an uproarious era. A few commentators have suggested that the chief of staff’s office be split in two to enable his deputy assume a part of that office’s onerous responsibilities, and thus probably end the paralysis in government, give leadership to the COVID-19 war, particularly balancing the policy of lockdown with reopening the economy, and imbue the government with the principle of inclusiveness that has been sorely lacking in the past few years. It will, however, take a miracle to effect this change. Mallam Daura has in fact suggested that all future chiefs of staff might have to be judged against the benchmark of Mallam Kyari’s performance. That is a tough act to follow in the estimation of assessors who have declared the late aide incomparable. Indeed, tons of social media vilification could not dent that benchmark, not even by someone as peculiarly acerbic and nuanced as the Kano social media nonesuch and former commissioner, Mr Magaji.

By Idowu Akinlotan

Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State is probably the most hysterical man or governor in Nigeria today. It takes a man of his peculiar gifts to frame his state’s COVID-19 crisis as a war between him and the federal government, and air travellers who land in his state as federal death agents sent purposely to infect and kill Riverians. Do Rivers State indigenes associate with his hysteria and hyperbole? It is hard to say. They acknowledge that the state has the constitutional right to make laws and executive orders not at war with the constitution, and they probably also appreciate their governor’s effort to protect the state from a rampaging disease.

But it is doubtful whether they are carried away by the governor’s dramatics and the manner he has framed the contrived disagreement with the federal authorities, especially after arresting, detaining and charging in court Caverton pilots and their 10 passengers in early April. More than a week later, the governor also arrested and detained 21 ExxonMobil workers for allegedly violating the state’s lockdown order.

In a press conference to justify the arrests and to explain to the public what he thought was a sustained federal effort to infect Rivers with the disease, the governor raised hysteria to fever pitch. Said he: “People in Abuja are not happy. They want Rivers State to be infected. They want to kill Rivers people and I will not  allow it. I was elected to protect Rivers people. Rivers State is not a pariah State. Nigerians shake when they hear oil companies; they shake because they have compromised. Imagine an appointed minister issuing an order to an elected governor. They wanted to rig us out and lost. Recall that the Former DG of the Department of State Service (DSS) ordered his men to leave the INEC Collation Centre for the invasion of the Centre. They lost.” Before the press conference, the governor had in his twitter account warned Abuja, saying, “I don’t take orders from Abuja but from Rivers people. If they want to work with me they should come, I will not go and beg them. If they want war, we will fight and I will make sure people of Rivers State are protected from coronavirus.”

It is of course utter nonsense that there is a federal conspiracy to infect Rivers with coronavirus. In addition, while the war against the disease is being fought, does the governor expect the economy to close down? He sees conspiracy in everything; but do those who move about in Rivers State on essential services carry a COVID-19 test certificate? Mr Wike has even issued an open threat to companies doing business in Rivers who have not contributed to the state’s efforts to combat the disease. Their names will be published sometime later, he says.

Whether relating to the Caverton incident or the ExxonMobil issue, it is clear Mr Wike is exaggerating and misusing his powers as well as unreasonably threatening the country’s economy. Other states are busy looking for how to balance the threat posed by the virus and the urgency of reopening their economies. But Mr Wike sees only dark conspiracies and war, a war, if it came to that, that he could neither hope to fight nor win. It is a shame that the federal government is at sixes and sevens in determining how to respond to this mawkish and contrived crisis.

The Rivers State governor is not alone in combating the virus with foolish rhetoric and contradictory and paranoid measures. He is of course the archetype of the hysterical and misguided governors across party lines who Nigerians have elected into office. Hopeful the electorate will do a better job in 2023. For if the governors had the police under their control, these petty tyrants would not be incapable of doing the unthinkable and hurting their people’s rights as well as their states’ Economies.

By Idowu Akinlotan

Less than two months after Nigeria first reported a case of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Ogun and Lagos States, the glacial calmness that had suffused the country as the rest of the world pined under the disease has all but disappeared. That calm is now replaced by a feeling of seething anxiety and fear of apocalypse. Nigeria’s response was at first slow and ineffective; but it began to escalate only when horror seemed to knock at the door. By mid-March, when Abba Kyari, Chief of Staff and fulcrum of the Muhammadu Buhari’s government, was sidelined by disease, analysts began to notice that chaos loomed over the presidency. Mr Kyari has passed away, and the presidency, which was yet to take firm and effective control of the many crises triggered by the new disease, is now faced with the onerous task of finding a replacement. That replacement, they expect, must have the confidence of the president and, hopefully, assuage the misgivings of many Nigerians who had accused the departed presidential aide of usurping and amassing more power than he could conceivably manage.

Despite empanelling a task force to tackle the disease, and co-opting the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Ministry of Finance to manage the economic dimension of the crisis, not excluding the economic sustainability panel headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, the presidency has been unable to reassure the public that the presidency had taken complete control of the COVID-19 war. In the weeks ahead, it will become clearer whether the presidency’s weaknesses are only a temporary manifestation of its initial confusion and paralysis, or whether it is in fact a reflection of the character of the government. The country faces an existential crisis like never before, and the scale of the impact of the disease can only be imagined. The late Mr Kyari had been briefly sidelined by the disease, and the president, other than his lockdown addresses and occasional and brief appearances, was yet to begin to drive the response like other world leaders. It was not a question of style, as some of his aides speciously argued. It was a question of absence of imagination , substance and appreciation of the urgency of the moment.

It is not clear what impact the hiatus created by Mr Kyari’s departure would leave upon the presidency, or how soon his replacement would be found, or whether the replacement itself would be exemplary. But given the scale of the COVID-19 crisis assailing the country, not only should Mr Kyari’s replacement be found quickly and be probably far more suitable for the office, the presidency must also find a way to make the president drive the response to the disease, and drive it with gusto despite his private battles with his own health demons. He will miss his loyal friend and confidant, but he has a country to run, and will have another opportunity to look at the structure of his presidency that must, going forward, preclude him from devolving his powers riskily and indefensibly to just one superman. True, he needs a clearing house, in view of his extensive limitations, but much more, he needs a very able, brilliant and deep kitchen cabinet whose preoccupation is not how presidential or sectional power is projected, but how the country is inclusively and expansively administered for today and for the day after tomorrow. The demands of the 21st century are so huge and complex and nuanced that the inattentiveness and complacency of the past would, if sustained today, amount to criminal negligence. The situation is bad already, particularly with how the country’s social dislocations and economic structure have combined to limit the options of the government in the face of a worsening pandemic; but better late than never. It had taken the presidency about a month to act after the virus hit Nigeria, and when it finally acted, the response had lacked oomph, direction and conviction. Change must be encouraged.

Two days before the president extended the lockdown order on Lagos and Ogun States and the Federal Capital City (FCT), one of his spokesmen, Garba Shehu had released a loaded statement that foreshadowed the extension. The first lockdown was almost two weeks old when Mr Shehu’s statement was released. Among other things, it gave an insight into why the presidency was minded to add another extension. “The freedoms we ask you to willingly forsake today,” Mr Shehu said blithely, mirroring the mind of the president, “will only last as long as our scientific advisers declare they are necessary. But they are essential  world over  to halt and defeat the spread of this virus.” Thankfully, the statement seemed only like a testing of the waters, for the president, in his extension speech, vouchsafed no such sweeping powers to the scientific community, even if he obliquely suggested it. In the event, Mr Shehu’s April 11 statement was really unnecessary. It added nothing to the president’s speech two days later. The president’s first lockdown speech was without doubt exceedingly officious. After seeing how Nigerians had suffered under both the disease and the first lockdown, it was expected that the second lockdown speech would be inspiring and emotive, or at least proffering more concrete solutions — beyond expanding the number of beneficiaries of financial relief by one million — to the social upheaval the first lockdown was spawning. The second address did neither of the three.

Barely a week after the first lockdown, the controversy over whether the president had the legal backing to do what it did had happily been settled. If there was any argument about the extension speech, it was not about its legality, or even about whether it was a discordant vignette of what the many panels saddled with the COVID-19 war thought. Having watched as the infection rate rose alarmingly from one infected person in late February to over 400 less than two months later (without comprehensive testing), and the fatalities also rose from zero to 17, Nigerians had begun to wonder whether a national lockdown, of course backed by legislation, was not a more rational option. Some states have argued that a national lockdown could lead to an explosion of unfathomable proportions, an explosion that could defy control, given the millions of Nigerians, some 70 percent, who depend on daily wage or income. And some other states have reacted hysterically and seemed to carve their states into independent republics. Yet other states have shown, by the protests and chaos that have attended the restrictions, that further lockdowns, especially one not balanced against the economic needs of the people, could precipitate disaster far more consequential than the disease the measures purport to fight.

It is in the midst of this crisis, one that requires a president that is as driven as his team is intellectually deep, that President Buhari lost his right-hand man, and is expected to now take far-reaching decisions about the crisis and the future of the country without delay. The Federal Executive Council (FEC) is unadvisedly not meeting weekly as it should; the legislature has scaled down its activities but promised to convene if urgently required to do so; and the judiciary has all but closed shop. Regardless of these limiting conditions, the president must very urgently cast his net far and wide to find a few people who can meet minds with him and give direction and impetus to the war, not to talk of inspiring Nigerians to believe they can surmount COVID-19 without submitting to the gloom and disaster predicted by the international community, including the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations (UN).

The presidential task force led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, has worked very hard to rein in the disease, and the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has risen admirably to the occasion after its initial perplexity. But as Mr Mustapha said during his interaction with the parliament, there is little coordination in the COVID-19 war, especially in terms of managing the donations made by individuals, corporate organisations and agencies. Without meaning to say so, and he can even insist he did not imply it, Mr Mustapha was, however, referencing the absence of overarching control of the anti-coronavirus war. Whether they like it or not, that control must be found and imposed. They have little time to do so, if the crisis is not to spiral beyond their control.

Given the anomalous and conflicting responses of many state governments, some of which manifest paranoia, irrationality and incompetence — with no state excluded — it is time for the president to cobble together a national response that allows for local peculiarities. The government should stop looking at the United States for example or inspiration. And neither the United Kingdom, nor Spain, nor Italy, nor France, nor Russia is a great example. Few Nigerians are confident that the president understands all the issues involved in the COVID-19 war, seeing that he has neither chaired any extensive meeting on the crisis nor addressed the media, nor yet interacted with the public. He is in fact thought to be vulnerable to the disease because of the underlying health challenges he has battled for some years. But he can still control the crisis even without visiting the afflicted, and he can at least be open about his feelings, fears and expectations.

He has addressed the country twice; but he has not been open about his own health status, nor spoken about his late Chief of Staff’s inadvisable trip to Germany and Egypt, refusal to self-isolate, and how unusually he sought private treatment while defying the quarantine law until he died. It is one thing for the president to be naturally reclusive; it is another thing to be excessively secretive. The president may not enjoy the best of health; but so do many of his compatriots. That should, however, not deter him from opening up about himself, his family, his team and the crisis. It is time he abandoned his taciturnity and secretiveness. The country is on the cusp of a disaster; it requires the president to act openly, tactfully and decisively, but more crucially, wisely. Yes, wisely. And the place to begin is to see how a national lockdown, coupled with aggressive anti-COVID-19 measures, can be balanced against the deprivations suffered, and may still have to be endured, by more than 70 to 80 percent of the population.

The president needs to be aggressive in sustaining businesses, ensuring retrenchments are kept to the barest minimum, and nearly everyone, including salary earners, made to receive substantial financial palliatives. This is no time for exclusions or tokenism. The law enforcement agencies have sometimes been heavy-handed; it is time the president read the riot act to their commanders. The president needs to know that the country is in fact heading towards a major crisis far more dangerous than the virus itself if the presidency continues its ham-fisted approach to the virus. The country’s political structure leaves him with few options. But he should take advice and act and spend proactively and decisively. He doesn’t have tomorrow. The scientific community, which Mr Shehu spoke about so eloquently, cannot decide alone when the president should end or extend a lockdown. It is a decision that must be guided by politics, science and the economy. Indeed, there should even be a trade-off if the country is not to submit to anarchy.

By Idowu Akinlotan

Some 15 Chinese medical experts arrived Nigeria last week supposedly to bolster the fight against COVID-19 which has officially infected over 300 people and caused or hasten the death of seven. When Chinese officials speak about the experts, they give the impression they were invited by Chinese contractors in Nigeria to take care of certain health issues pertaining to some Chinese workers. When Nigerian officials speak about the same experts, they give the impression they are in Nigeria to impart technical skills to their Nigerian counterparts. In between these two somewhat mutually exclusive positions, Nigerian and Chinese officials have spoken confusedly, if not untruthfully, about what the experts have come to do. Perhaps the most representative position of the experts’ presence in Nigeria comes from the Executive Director, China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation, Jacques Liao. According to him, “All members of the (Chinese experts) working team have tested negative for COVID-19 and shall commence their stay in Nigeria by spending 14 days in quarantine. The primary purpose of the team is to provide CCECC employees with critical and necessary healthcare assistance. They are also coming with adequate personal protective equipment and medical items for the employees.”

Probably the most representative position of the Nigerian government on the same subject comes from the Health minister, Osagie Ehanire, who, after oscillating between many conflicting opinions, finally says that the Chinese experts are in Nigeria to share their knowledge and expertise of fighting COVID-19 as well as to strengthen the management of the disease with regard to critical care. Leader of the presidential task force on the disease, Boss Mustapha, who is also the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), is more sanguine about the experts. Of all the things they have come to do, he says, treating Nigerian patients is not among the tasks assigned to the Chinese experts. They will only share experience. But with whom? It is hard to say. Nigerian doctors have proved spectacularly adept at handling the disease, are adamant they are uninterested in interacting with the Chinese experts, and have balked at the invitation. The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and the National Assembly, not to talk of a majority of Nigerians, are also suspicious of the invitation extended to the Chinese experts, and fear that there is more to their presence than meets the eye. In fact, most Nigerians fear that both the Nigerian government and the Chinese are lying, especially at this time when China, purporting to fight coronavirus disease, has executed deeply racist measures against Africans in China.

Indeed, the obduracy of government officials over the Chinese experts has fuelled suspicion that neither the Chinese nor Nigerian officials are telling the truth about the invitation. The Chinese may have partially exited the pandemic, but the disease in Nigeria has neither risen to the scale the Chinese contended with months ago in their own country nor is their success rate in treating the disease as notable as Nigeria’s. Many Nigerians have begun to think that the Chinese are in Nigeria for totally different reasons. After all, Nigerian officials were so desperate to allow the so-called experts in, regardless of widespread opposition from Nigerians, that it is no longer unreasonable to think that the government has not given the public full disclosure. They had better hope there is no spike in COVID-19 cases, for they would be held accountable, much more than the carelessness and uncooperativeness of Nigerians who defy lockdowns to feed their families.

The visit of the Chinese experts is totally unnecessary and insulting. It is unwarranted at this point, not even for reasons that presume to stave off huge future coronavirus outbreaks. Chinese officials say the visit is to afford Chinese workers in Nigeria medical treatment. Treatment for what? Has any Chinese reported coming down with COVID-19 unknown to Nigerian health officials, and are they averse to being treated by Nigerian doctors when they are manhandling Nigerians in China? And rather than importing experts into Nigeria, would evacuation not have been far better and cheaper for the Chinese? The Chinese population in Nigeria is not as huge as in some other African countries. What is more, the number of infections in Nigeria has so far been low, a fact that seems to displease some countries which have predicted doom for Africa. How many experts have the Chinese sent to those other places to dispense medical tourism? And is the number of the Chinese supposedly needing medical care or critical care in Nigeria so high as to merit the expensive array of equipment brought into the country, even as part of corporate social responsibility? Nigeria has managed to inspire its own novel way of handling epidemics, whether Lassa fever or Ebola. Medical staff and hospitals in Nigeria may not be funded as adequately as situations demand, but doctors in these parts have performed very well within the availability of resources and equipment. It will be a tragedy if Nigeria’s successes, rather than be recommended to other countries, is stunted or disparaged in favour of other countries’ scientific and medical achievements.

There is much to recommend Nigeria. But Nigerian leaders and government officials have schooled themselves in disdaining local expertise and becoming entranced by foreign scientific breakthroughs and developments. Nigerian leaders have done the country a huge disservice by allowing the importation of Chinese medical experts even for the one month period they claimed. Until COVID-19, these leaders always went abroad for treatment for the most common ailments. They have consistently underfunded, and sometimes even defunded, the health sector on a criminally negligent scale. They seldom think highly of local achievements, preferring to embrace and applaud foreign breakthroughs in science, medicine and engineering. Their schools are in tatters, and research and development have been almost completely abandoned. They run their country with as much tentativeness as their lethargy can muster, forsaking long-term goals and ambitions — ambitions that should lead to considerations of the well-being of future generations. In fact they have not spoken out about finding a cure or vaccine for any kind of coronavirus disease. They are not desperate about progress, have been distracted by various silly schemes such as IPPIS, and have allowed their research institutions all over the country to go to seed.

When Nigerian doctors, by sheer industry, knocked Ebola into a cocked hat, the government simply closed the books on the disease while other countries continued to work hard to find a cure. Lassa fever, like meningitis, has become for them a routine and tolerable disease. They are used to annual outbreaks, endure them, placate the disease, and have made only half-hearted attempt to completely eradicate it. Nigeria has been hit by flu epidemics on a number of occasions. Is there any research institution dedicated to finding a cure, especially giving the huge casualty figures, a cure that can be commercialised? Confronted by COVID-19, and apart from empanelling a task force to lead the assault against it, Nigeria has not made any significant effort to assemble and fund a research group to find a cure. Instead, they have mired themselves in a needless controversy over the importation of Chinese experts, and deflected the necessity of achieving a worthy and indigenous treatment regimen.

It is clear that Nigeria is afflicted by mental servitude. There is no other way to explain why the government will forge ahead despite opposition to the invitation of Chinese experts. The government obviously has more regard for the Chinese than they have for Nigerians who put them in office. This official defiance speaks to the country’s hideous political structure, particularly the aspect of leadership recruitment. The government’s defiance illustrates the huge responsibility Nigerians have in electing into office the right, tested and enlightened representatives and leaders. At a time like this, such as COVID-19 represents, the administrative and intellectual mettle of a government is tested. There have been flashes of individual brilliance in tackling the crisis, both at the state and federal levels. But just as the federal government has approached the problem desultorily by bamboozling the people with insincerity and lethargy, the states have also exposed many of their governors as either petty tyrants or incompetent administrators.

Shutdowns and lockdowns have been administered with only flimsy and uncoordinated consideration for the vulnerable, while poor and hungry people have been pilloried in terms that are too gross to repeat in this place. Even when the objective of achieving a healthy society is sound, the implementation has sometimes been outlandishly offensive. Cross River brusquely ordered the wearing of masks without ensuring they are available or tested to be free of contamination, and has inflicted unreasonable pains on those who fail to conform. The offenders’ failure is interpreted as defiance to be visited with brutality and extrajudicial measures. Rivers State is probably the most autocratic and insensate at this time, hiding under the sound objective of proactively curbing the disease to make incendiary statements against individuals, organisations and governments. Other states have grovelled before religions, pandered to the rich, oppressed the poor who are left to their own devices, and propounded knee-jerk panaceas so backward and imponderable that it is hard to imagine they emanated from elected governments.

It is not certain that Nigerians will learn any lesson from the abominable ways their governments at the national and state levels are tackling COVID-19. But it must be stated that once the people ceded control to a government, they are undone if such controls are ceded to leaders who suffer from all kinds of complexes, who are not enlightened, who are narrow-minded, and who are simply too mentally lazy, intolerant and retrogressive to either take the people into confidence and treat them as the real owners of power or make sane and reasonable policies designed to ameliorate the people’s harsh conditions. Parents know that in their old age, their children will invariable begin to take decisions on behalf of the family. That time always comes. But parents always hope that when that change occurs, their children should take the right and sensible decisions that would not destroy family reputations and legacies. But God save parents who have not inculcated the right character and values in their children.

The same goes for nations. In crisis, elected leaders, or even usurpers, must grapple with their countries’ existential problems and take decisions and make judgements they consider fitting. May God save a nation whose leaders can’t analyse issues properly, expand the boundaries of debate, embrace and promote uplifting ideas, consult widely and deeply, and take a walk in the woods in order to contemplate on the best decisions that are viable for the short term, medium term, and long term; decisions that will retain their validity and vitality for decades. Nigerians should answer whether the men and women they put in office at the executive and legislative levels in their states and at the federal level have justified the confidence reposed in them. Or whether the people themselves have been foolish in electing tyrants and incompetents. Either way, the country must now live with the choices they have casually and parochially made.

The NMA may keep its resolve not to have anything to do with the so-called Chinese experts. But the federal government has doctors in their employment who may be cajoled into giving the expatriates a listening ear. Still, it will not be a bad idea if as many resolute groups as possible show that while Nigeria may not be as rich as its human and mineral resources indicate, they still possess enough character to put up open and dignified resistance. As David O. McKay once aptly admonished, “Always remember that a soldier’s pack is lighter than a slave’s chains.” If the Nigerian government is too short-sighted to see into the future, partly because they can’t even understand the present, the people should not display similar encumbrances.

By Idowu Akinlotan

After weeks of uncertainty, President Muhammadu Buhari on March 29 finally addressed the nation on the coronavirus crisis coursing through Nigeria and ravaging many parts of the world. Some six days earlier, he had made a half-hearted attempt to address the nation, but what he had to say then was neither comprehensive nor did it resonate with the public. Indeed, most people missed the earlier address entirely. The broadcast of last Sunday was more comprehensive, more assertive, but ultimately even more controversial. Before March 29, the controversy centred on his reticence, and how that reticence had become elevated into an administrative style. After his last address, the controversy transformed into whether what he had to say and how he approached the health crisis facing the nation satisfied the prerequisites of substance and constitutionality. It is the president’s enduring leadership incongruities that even in the midst of some of his sound policy measures, the controversies he triggers sometimes outweigh, if not completely diminish, his sensible and practical deeds.

More than a week before he finally agreed to address Nigerians, Information minister, Lai Mohammed, had suggested that it was not yet time for the president to speak on the coronavirus crisis, and this was way after many world leaders had addressed their nations and began personifying the war against that unusual and relentless enemy. About three days before the March 29 address, presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, also berated the calls for a presidential address, describing the president’s taciturnity as a leadership style that was deeply idiosyncratic. But because the calls would not go away, and perhaps after dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s, the president and his team finally relented and gave an address. Almost like the kerfuffle that surrounded the suggestion about silence being a presidential style, this latest address has also become somewhat controversial. But both controversies are, however, unlikely to retain public attention for long. The frenzied changes cascading round the country ensure that no issue, no matter how grave or major, remains in the public domain for too long: not banditry, which exceeds itself in the brutality of its practitioners, nor kidnapping, which has become a national subculture, nor atrocities by herdsmen whose terrorist inclinations shockingly receive official connivance.

The almost universal impression is that in his second address, which is actually the first real address, the president spoke like a statesman and succinctly addressed the main issues pertaining to the coronavirus crisis. Nigerians had called for him to lead from the front. He had finally started to do so. They had wanted him to champion the fight. He had finally given the impression of personifying the fight and issuing rules and regulations that do not seem far-fetched to a majority of Nigerians. After enumerating what his government had done and painting a picture of what still needs to be done to rein in a health monster rubbishing the know-how of many industrialised nations like the United States, Spain and Italy, President Buhari anchored his address and decisions on the Quarantine Act of 1926. He followed up by announcing a lockdown of two states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), giving a few exemptions, and adding a few benefits to palliate the sufferings of those expected to bear a disproportionate brunt of the pains of executing his orders. The palliatives did not seem well thought-out, nor did a few of the measures announced seem carefully reasoned, but the public was in no mood to be finicky about what they described as a huge and merciless threat to everybody.

All things considered, it was unlikely that the presidency expected any serious criticisms. They thought they had covered all grounds and left nothing to chance. But the criticisms streamed in notwithstanding the government’s efforts, the competence of the presidential task force, the controversial palliatives, and the equally controversial cash transfers, etc. None of the criticisms faulted the president’s ultimate goal of ridding the country of the virus, but they feared that the president, as usual, acted dictatorially by not underpinning his anti-coronavirus war with an enabling law, or even the right law for that matter. But exasperated by the fussiness of the critics, presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, hurled a few barbs at one or two of the notable critics, particularly Prof Wole Soyinka who had wondered whether the president had the right to order a lockdown on some states. Responding, however, and without addressing the constitutional puzzles raised by the Nobel laureate, Mallam Shehu blurted out: “The scientific and medical guidance the world over is clear: the way to defeat the virus is to halt its spread through limitation of movement of people…In the meantime, we ask the people of Nigeria to trust the words of our doctors and scientists  and not fiction writers  at this time of national crisis.” But the eminent professor did not question whether restricting movement as a measure was legal. He only asked whether in the case of the lockdown in question due process had been observed. Other legal experts, including Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa and Femi Falana, had also questioned the president’s methods, preferring a different, probably inclusive, approach. Indeed, it was not surprising that Ogun State chafed at the suddenness of the president’s measures, with Governor Dapo Abiodun unilaterally giving his state a few days respite in the lockdown implementation.

Even though the president’s decisions left much to be desired, and too many loopholes were evident in both the address and the regulations later signed to give the lockdown legal backing, most Nigerians are unwilling to challenge the president. A certain paranoia and urgency had crept into the war against the virus to the point that the country appears eager to embrace any desperate measure to stamp out the virus. They reasoned that they could live with the president’s legal and constitutional infractions, but could not endure the rampage of the virus even for one day longer. In any case, having become accustomed to yielding to the president’s many unconstitutional measures, and surviving the pains that follow at the expense of the health of their democracy, coping with a few more constitutional strictures and illegalities would not kill them. It is precisely this sufferance that Prof Soyinka and a few others feel justifiably queasy about. But most Nigerians are with the president, whether he handles the virus crisis with the expertise and inclusiveness required of him or not, or whether the crisis could not have been handled differently and still within the ambits of the law.

Nigerians will be careful next time in asking their president to step into any fray. They should never assume that he would ineluctably become involved in a crisis trammelled by the legal and constitutional parameters that seem so obvious to everyone. Contrary to what the president said about overreaction and underreaction in the fight against the virus, either position is in fact possible. After all, in the same breath and indeed in the same paragraph in his March 29 address, the president spoke about the necessity of ensuring “the right reaction by the right agencies and trained experts.” There is no doubt that the country possesses the right laws to guide this emergency, whether as contained in the constitution itself or in the Quarantine Act. Without question too, he could have achieved the same results by properly deploying those laws without succumbing to the temptation to speak and give arbitrary orders. He spoke of having notified the state governments of an impending lockdown. But it was a decision he should have taken involving the state governments, not notifying them because he supposed the law empowers him singly.

By now, the country must be used to the president’s imperious approach to common and even mundane issues. In exasperation, the country has resolved to accommodate what his minders describe as his idiosyncrasies, believing that democracy and its rubric and principles are unlikely to be entrenched under the Buhari presidency, just like they were not entrenched under past presidencies. Prof Soyinka and all other patriots who warn that process is as important as objective indicate that many ensnared nations should serve as examples. They know by experience that it is during crisis that democracy or the rights and liberties of the people are most endangered or abridged. Already, some Nigerian officials, even from the presidential task force on COVID-19, have spoken glowingly of the arbitrary measures deployed by China and Russia to combat the virus, while execrating the so-called liberal measures deployed by Spain, Italy and the United States. Their logic is beguiling, despite its speciousness.

What is more, the Information minister has warned that if the states on lockdown do not behave themselves by abiding with and enduring the rules and regulations of the drastic measure as the government expects, the lockdown would be extended by another week or weeks. Mr Mohammed is always insufferable. Tact and diplomacy are not his forte. He and others in government, thinking and posturing with the disdainful elitism that has become their hallmark for years, completely ignore the fact that their government did not act on time on COVID-19; and when they stirred themselves, they invariably acted peremptorily without taking cognisance of the prevailing conditions of their country and people. This was why Gov Abiodun of Ogun State deferred the implementation of the lockdown measure by a few days. Lagos should have followed suit, though it was already almost shutdown and had had a head start over Ogun State. It is now clear that if the government does not manage to flatten the curve of infection during the lockdown, rather than blame itself for tardiness and arbitrariness, it will invariably blame the affected states and FCT for not obeying the order enough. Head or tail, it is hard for the people to win.

It is emotional blackmail to castigate critics who take exception to how the Buhari presidency is waging the COVID-19 war. Prof Soyinka and the other lawyers who try to prevail on the government to embrace the right process should not feel apologetic. Yes, they insist they are on the same page with the federal government, but only differ on process. Well, they should be appreciated for their explanations, but it really does not matter whether anyone believes their patriotism or not. They have made their points and properly and reasonably taken issue with the government. They are right to warn that authoritarianism often takes root and flowers in time of crisis, as history has amply shown. In the early years of the Buhari presidency’s war against graft, most Nigerians gave the president the benefit of the doubt, derided the judiciary, denounced the rule of law, and even urged the adoption of extra-judicial measures to rein in corruption. It was not until much later that the public shrank from the government’s double standard and the haphazard and futile manner the war was being waged.

The Lagos State government had trouble managing the distribution of palliatives to the vulnerable in the society during its graduated shutdown of the state. The federal government, despite its vaunted claims and know-how, will have even more trouble giving succour to the needy. The lockdown, it is clear, was done without significant preparation. It is a gamble they expect to pay off regardless of the shambolic nature the measure is being implemented. Hopefully, however, the federal government will quickly recognise its failings and make substantial amendment both in fighting the disease and in making palliatives available to the needy. As for the brusque and even undemocratic manner the government has pursued its policies and ideas since assumption of office, especially as exampled by the president’s March 29 address, which was replete with orders and indefensible assumptions, there is little anyone can do to change their style. Democracy and the rule of law, even in times of grave emergencies, are not virtues everyone can appreciate. They require deep understanding and conviction by leaders and the public. But only the deep can call to deep. Prof Soyinka et al. will always be misunderstood in their quest for order and progress. Despite Mallam Shehu’s name -calling, the professor and others who insist the process is as important as the objective are far ahead of their time.

The head of the presidential task force on COVID-19, Boss Mustapha, sometimes speaks like a democrat. He has warned security agencies not to complicate the crisis by manhandling members of the public. But the violence meted out to some people during the lockdown by security and law enforcement officers in a few parts of the country is nothing but an indication of how deeply ingrained in the security agencies such violent behaviour is, a violent behaviour constantly excused on the grounds of grave existential threat facing the country. There are not many in government who respect due process and appreciate the existence of alternative ways of combating societal ills and threats. But there are always other ways, perhaps even more effective ways, of doing things and achieving the same goals. These other ways do not diminish bureaucratic and governmental capacity to solve problems, and more importantly, they do not jeopardise the future of the democratic system the country has chosen in place of the Chinese or Russian model. When the people tire of the model of their choice, they are at liberty to choose or design any other model.

There will still be other threats to the republic, if not in the immediate future, then sometime in the distant future; if not health related, then perhaps politics or economy related. Just like how the civilization of a country is partly measured by how well it treats its prisoners and dissenters, it will be a mark of Nigeria’s advancement how well complex existential problems are resolved without triggering more fissures and causing more collateral damage. But the best way to guarantee that great and hypothetical future, one in which during crisis, the society can rest assured that the best and steadiest hands are in control, is by putting people of conviction and exposure in office. Surely the country must be tired of gyrating around mediocrity, even in the elementary task of tackling a fairly straight-forward crisis.

Idowu Akinlotan

IT must weigh heavily on the minds of Nigerians that of all the responses to the gravest existential crisis Nigeria has probably ever faced, President Muhammadu Buhari and his combative spokesmen think it is a question of style that no constant stream of words or statements are coming from the number one citizen. The country should be debating the actual responses of the president, whether they are meaningful enough, whether he is moving from one related issue to another quickly enough, whether he is answering questions with empathy, competence or indifference, and whether his aides, whom he has saddled with certain responsibilities relating to the mitigation of the coronavirus infection in Nigeria, are marching briskly with him. With thousands dying daily from the disease, it is understandable if Nigerians, who are not spared the horrifying savagery of the disease, worry about what their president is saying or, in this case, not saying.

The debate should never be about whether the president has the liberty to choose to be reticent in the face of a worsening national crisis, or whether his spokesmen are characteristically uncivil in their refutation of the people’s allegations.  The debate should be about the virus, its relentless march, and the quality of options embraced by responders. The president’s options are limited, direly limited, regardless of the state of his health or whether given his age and health challenges he is in fact susceptible to the disease. He is expected to lead in order for the country to follow, not by delegating powers and responsibilities alone or even by precepts, but almost entirely by example and by getting his hands dirty. If he cannot, he owes the nation an explanation, not mournful and unbroken silence.

As this piece was being written, nearly 90 Nigerians were estimated to have been infected by a virus scientists claim has merely mutated and recrudesced. There is fear that the number of infection could rise much further and faster than previously thought, perhaps to thousands and thousands. It is that fear that they need their president to speak to, for him to marshal voluminous and appropriate responses and arguments. Nigerians note that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has announced a welter of economic measures and palliatives to tackle the fallout of the coronavirus crisis, and even though the measures are in some respects substantial and expected, the people are uncomfortable with their ad hocism, not to say the lack of parliamentary debates to fine-tune them and give them impetus. Nigerians also note that a presidential task force on the crisis engendered by the virus has been set under the leadership of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF). But they question the appropriateness of that assignment, regardless of the competence and personal qualities of the SGF. They acknowledge that the committee has put a number of salutary measures in place and spoken somewhat ably to the situation. But they see that there is no coordination among all the groups responding to the crisis, nor do the CBN and the task force have the overarching authority to marshal the responses of the 36 states into a unified and coherent whole.

No matter what the president thinks or his spokesmen say, his lack of impactful and visible presence not only stymies the fight against the virus, it has also created multiple vacuums which many incompetent state governments are childishly and amateurishly rushing to fill. The cohesive responses which the president should naturally inspire, particularly with him leading from the front, is noticeably absent. Some states are on lockdown without any sensible indication of when the measure would be lifted. Some states are on a partial shutdown, but even these are tempted by the drama and showiness of total lockdown to enact that same extreme policy. Few have bothered to look at the structure of the Nigerian economy: whether like China it can sustain a lockdown on the scale some state governments in Nigeria have envisaged, or whether like the United States and many European countries they have the database that would guide the distribution of reliefs. Even the federal government is mulling over a total lockdown. Paramount to the proponents of a lockdown are the fear of the damage the virus could cause to life, as Italy and Spain are experiencing, and its potential to quickly overwhelm and crash the country’s abysmally poor and underdeveloped healthcare system.

Nigerians need their president to aggregate and chart a direction out of the multiplicity of responses to the plague, particularly if it comes to a lockdown. They need him to think for the country in terms of the calibrated responses Nigeria’s fragile economy can cope with without triggering an unmanageable uprising or recession. But the future has caught up with Nigeria, a country that has consistently elected poor leaders into office. Sadly, there is nothing to indicate, given the country’s poor leadership recruitment process, that parochial and pedestrian considerations would still not guide the election of future leaders. The people have been responsible for electing wrong representatives into office, and have done so joyously and repeatedly. Now they must be wondering why those leaders are either absent in times of trouble, and are rationalising that absence. If the president finally stirs himself, assuming that possibility theoretically exists, there is no proof that his interventions would be both appropriate and adequate. Nigeria’s existential crisis is undoubtedly set to be compounded.

How on earth could the government indefinitely postpone their weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting? And with that postponement, which group of persons or which person would take decisions on behalf of the government? How could they intentionally create a vacuum and hope that a task force or a minister or a monetary agency would fill the brutal gap? These questions are not provocative. Nigerians are victims of a disturbing dereliction of duty by the government. Not only should the FEC still continue meeting, even if it kills them, the parliament should also sometimes sit to periodically review the effectiveness of the laws or motions passed to guide the country’s war against the virus as well as inspire an anxious people and constantly speak to the grave situation wasting the land.

Years ago, this column took exception to Nigeria’s governing structure, warning that the president had difficulties in propounding a modern or comprehensive vision of what the Nigerian legislature and judiciary should look like, not to talk of how to mould the executive branch into driving the march into the future. The column also belaboured the presidency for assembling a coterie of aides that seemed eager to act conspiratorially all the time and preferred to dedicate themselves to parochial interests instead of helping the president coax a vision for the future out of Nigeria’s disparate and sometimes competing cultures and religions. Should he fail, and the column was pessimistic, it would unleash a disaster upon the country, stifle progress and engender hopelessness. The column also warned that it was not right for the president to determine that he was centring his entire administration on one man, as he glibly announced at the inauguration of his second term. The warnings went unheeded, with the president sticking fast to his old ways and structures.

The sickness and evacuation of Abba Kyari, who is widely regarded as the fulcrum of the president’s office, has exposed the Buhari presidency as a fragile set up, indicating that it was neither structured nor designed to aggregate the modernising forces and influences indispensable to the development of Nigeria and the forging of a great nation. Indeed, it is because everything rotated around the office of the Chief of Staff to the president that Mallam Kyari could not afford the sensible 14 days self-isolation his travels to high-risk coronavirus countries required. No one knows why he felt immune to the disease. But with his temporary exit, everything in the presidency has teetered very badly and finding direction seems problematic. Even the president, assuming he is still as fit as a fiddle as his spokesmen say, has seemed lost. The short clip he was said to have made on the response of his government to the virus does no credit to his person or government.

If both the president and Mallam Kyari regain their composure, is there any hope that the presidency would soon return reinvigorated and restructured? No one is sure. The president’s style, as rationalised by his spokesmen, is deeply idiosyncratic. It is unlikely to change. He will not surround himself with confident, outspoken and impassioned men, and he will not see opening up his government to all parts of the country as a sign of strength. Some leaders have a fanatical zeal to seek out wise and promising minds from all walks of life. President Buhari’s conservatism bars him from any such adventurism, preferring to surround himself with aides with whom he feels safe and unflustered. Theoretically, he has the liberty to select his team, as long as no laws are broken. But when a crisis like the one engendered by coronavirus strikes, the fault lines of his presidency and the weakness and controversiality of his ideas come out in bold relief.

Supporters of President Buhari and his spokesmen may not agree, but if the president had wise men around him and listened to them, it is unlikely that when the virus began its rampage the government would not have been prevailed upon to quickly ramp up its response. In the circumstance, the government’s response was unnaturally slow and exasperating. Nigeria had a head start of more than two or three weeks. There should have been a partial shutdown of the country as early as end of January or early February, and the country’s border controls and medical response to the virus should have been prepared far in advance. Alas, disaster still struck, with some rumour mongers unkindly suggesting that the airports remained opened far longer than required because the president considered his private interest.

It is not certain who will announce a lockdown first, the federal government or the states. Lagos has led the way and the fight against the virus, but it has not recorded any deaths despite having the highest number of infected people. Some states are fortunate not to record even one infected case. That luck will not hold up for much longer if a lockdown is not executed. Some states have, however, panicked themselves into a hasty lockdown without considering the feasibility, seeing that most workers in their states are self-employed and depend on daily income without any help from the government. Lagos has been sensibly reluctant to do a lockdown or curfew, but has nevertheless rolled out palliatives to mitigate the effect of a partial shutdown. Though it is worst hit, it has tended to function like a thinking government from which others, including the federal government, should borrow a leaf. It is restrained, probably debates its measures, recognises the potential of a hungry and immobilised populace, understands that it is the nation’s commercial capital, and is wary of the economic and social consequences of shutting down its factories and banks. Indeed, other than its civil service, most of its other measures have been very restrained and calibrated for the short term.

It is an irony that Lagos has addressed the crisis like the federal government should, and the federal government has addressed the crisis like a local government might. Information minister Lai Mohammed has spoken glibly of a lockdown; it is hoped that the federal government would meet, debate the measure, agree on palliatives and how to get them to the needy, and determine how long in the first instance the proposed lockdown would last. They must calculate the cost to the economy, recognise the people’s congested living conditions, and gauge exactly what measures they hope to execute during a lockdown. The term may seem appealing, especially seeing how some countries have executed it and profited from it; but it is actually a desperate measure which serious economies are wary of embracing. China’s production engines continued to rev even during their regional lockdowns. Given their surging economic might, they didn’t have a choice but to think expansively beyond the significance of the measure. Locking down Nigeria, without first knowing what to do with it, may trigger consequences the government might be unable to manage.

Lagos has not yet mastered the science of distributing palliatives. And despite being at the forefront of the war against coronavirus, it has been hesitant to declare a total lockdown. It recognises the need to first study the mobility of the vectors of the virus, how they came through land borders, airports or seaports. The airports and land borders have been shut, but a few of the latest cases reportedly came through the seaports. The state knows it must clarify the measures it has put in place, in the face of federal negligence and initial slothfulness, to immobilise those carriers? If the state cannot stanch the flow of these vectors, and a lockdown becomes inevitable and probably desirable, then it understands that it must find ways of reaching the poor, who are probably more than the 200,000 households it said qualified for relief. The poor will not stay locked up to starve without a struggle. They will revolt, if not immediately, then a little later. These issues must be anticipated, addressed and resolved before a lockdown is ordered. A shutdown or lockdown is not a fanciful measure to be talked about flippantly or embraced casually, regardless of the apocalyptic figures of infections and deaths. A cost-benefit analysis is imperative.

Hopefully too, the federal government does not imagine that it has no responsibility to poor Nigerians caught up in a lockdown. It has, in fact, far more responsibility than states. If the president and his chief of staff are not visibly available to lead the war, and the vice president has been left castrated, those who still have some leverage in the federal government should think like patriots and promote someone they can trust to think for the country and lead the war. The lethargy at the centre is a disservice to Nigeria and an insult that ridicules and lowers Nigeria in the eyes of the world. The war is too grave to be left to the childish discretion of some state governments and the uncoordinated responses of some members of the Buhari cabinet. Indeed, no one can deny that Nigerians feel a sense of emptiness in the fight against the disease. They yearn for a commander, a charismatic one to inspire and give them hope.

The US president Donald Trump is assiduously leading the war for his country, exampled by his unending press conferences. Britain’s Boris Johnson has unfortunately caught the virus in his intrepid actions and movements around the country to defeat the virus. Britons won’t forget that he led from the front. Many other presidents are enduring sleepless nights in their feverish effort to defeat the menace, even as legislators in some countries are coming down with the disease. It is cruel and standoffish to talk of presidential style in the face of the mortal threat Nigeria faces.

By Idowu Akinlotan

 

Before the Italian index case who brought coronavirus into Nigeria in February, Nigeria was largely complacent in preparing for this novel disease that was humbling rich and powerful countries in many parts of the world. Nigeria is neither rich nor powerful.

Its only hope against such a persistent plague was to avoid or evade it. But its healthcare facilities were in tatters, poorly funded and poorly equipped. Most hospitals have either few or no ventilators, including the so-called centres of excellence teaching hospitals.

Most of them were and are still lacking in face masks and protective gear, and their isolation units and ICUs can only accommodate few patients at a time. At any point in time too, some hospital staff are on strike for something as basic as non-payment of salaries and allowances.

In the face of such gross inadequacies, the news of impending coronavirus plague should have gingered huge preparations.

Alarmingly, not much was done. With countries like France, United States, Italy and Spain among others struggling to rein in the plague, there would be mayhem in Nigeria if the virus became an avalanche.

This was before the index case arrived. Not only did he arrive virtually unspotted, many other index cases — because they also came independent of the Italian — have since arrived, and the authorities are struggling with contact tracing.

Nigeria has since ramped up its efforts, but hospitals and healthcare workers are still not being funded and equipped to battle the disease should there be a surge bigger than anticipated.

States have somewhat thankfully taken the initiative, but their efforts have been piddling, obviously handicapped by money and logistics.

Isolation units, where available and readied, can only accommodate a few patients; and so far, the federal government is neither coordinating the practical responses smoothly nor providing substantial funding to prepare hospitals and relevant staff for the pandemic.

The government has ordered partial lockdowns by limiting gatherings and dishing out a welter of suggestions, but there is still very little preparedness in key areas of national life to tackle the disease, never mind the effects.

Read Also: Coronavirus and soaring price of sanitisers

 

Perhaps the complacency is as a result of the country’s success in battling Ebola. But the country has been lackadaisical in addressing Lassa fever outbreaks.

A 14-man task force has, however, been set up, led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF). The panel should have been more appropriately led by the vice president.

The  Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) last week also announced a six-point palliative to cushion the effect of the disease on the economy.

The details are yet to be worked out, but there is scepticism that the palliatives will be as comprehensive as announced or judiciously managed, not to say far-reaching enough.

The global economy is already being adversely impacted, and the Nigerian economy, which was crawling before the outbreak, will definitely not be spared.

Given the amorphous structure of the Nigerian economy, the government must be careful not to imitate the lockdown implemented by developed economies. It will be unfeasible.

Hopefully the sequestration of Nigeria should allow the government to have a handle on the disease. But it must address the dire situations of the hospitals, a remedy it had failed to carry out for decades as the elite flocked abroad for medical attention.

Now everyone is vulnerable, including the very rich and the abysmal poor. This must be an uncomfortable truth for even the presidency which has done little to rebuild or augment Nigeria’s healthcare needs.

Overall, Nigerians must hope that the disease will not flare up far beyond what the country is experiencing now. Given the state of Nigeria’s readiness, the government will find it difficult to cope.

Hopefully, too, this disease should open the eyes of the country’s leaders to all that needs to be done to shift their developmental paradigms, particularly in the economic, educational and health sectors. Hopefully.

By Idowu Akinlotan

On Monday, the All Progressives Congress (APC) national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, won a spectacular victory in his seemingly unending scuffle with his enemies within the party. As if the country missed the news, he has openly exulted in that victory both as a reminder to everyone and more crucially to numb his opponents. Despite the rampage of coronavirus pandemic, which was beginning to agitate many in these parts, Mr Oshiomhole’s anticlimactic victory dominated the news. The victory is indisputable, but he will be grossly mistaken to think the war is over. The next election cycle is about three years away. Surely the APC chairman knows that his truculent enemies have taken an oath, in a manner of speaking, to dethrone him. They will stop at nothing both to dethrone him and to make him politically irrelevant for as long as they live.

But given his political and labour union antecedents, not to say by far the most potent of his talents — his abrasive and iconoclastic style — Mr Oshiomhole instinctively knows that his victory is temporary and even tentative, and his enemies more determined than ever to destroy him. He will be on his guard, as his enemies will be on their toes, poised to sink their daggers in his chest, and eager to wipe the smirk from his hated face. Mr Oshiomhole’s enemies are intransigent. They have merely retreated, anxious not to be completely exterminated. They will regroup and, with ferocity, recalibrate their guns, assured that they have time on their hands. They also know by instinct that the APC chairman is naturally feisty and prone to grandiloquence and mistakes. They will take their time and strike at the appropriate moment.

But meanwhile, Mr Oshiomhole can and should savour his victory. The victory came partly because his enemies did not really have a case, nor did they play by the rules and regulations of their party. The APC chairman was neither tactical in enforcing party rules nor diplomatic in dealing with and caging egotistic party leaders, some of them eternally smarting from the sucker punch he gave them in the run-up to the last general election. So, finding his attitude insufferable, they united against him, blocked their ears to reason, and maniacally rushed at him to finish him off. It boomeranged, not because they didn’t have personal reasons to fight him and hate him, but because the constitution of their party stipulates guidelines to mediate conflicts and ensure misunderstandings do not get out of hand. But, to the chairman’s enemies, those rules impede and undermine their objectives.

Whether the APC chairman is enthusiastic about the way he got his victory is not known. But at least he is happy with himself. He nearly didn’t get the reprieve he so badly craved when the coup plotters in his party appeared to have convinced President Muhammadu Buhari to sign in on the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting slated for last Tuesday. Both NEC and the National Working Committee (NWC) were already divided, with the Deputy National Secretary, Victor Giadom, making a bold but insane bid for the chairmanship after illegally summoning the NEC meeting as Acting National Secretary. It was a crazy thing to do; but he had such powerful backing within the party and in high places that neither the party’s constitution nor the country’s laws fettered him and his fellow plotters. Then, of course, arraigned against the chairman were the courts. The first court gave the March 4 injunction paralysing him, and another, just before the Court of Appeal ruled in his favour last Monday, also disingenuously empowered Mr Giadom to act as chairman. The plots were brazen and bold.

It may not be immediately clear why the Court of Appeal, which had initially declined to hear the appeal upon which outcome Mr Oshiomhole based all his hopes, eventually sat and bravely restored the APC chairman to his seat. Whether that act was contingent upon the realisation that the putsch had failed is hard to say. But all that was reported is that the president consented to the postponement of the NEC meeting, while the progressive governors had a fiery meeting in which one of the arrow-heads of the plot, Kebbi State’s Governor Atiku Bagudu, was skewered by his fellow governors, while Ekiti’s Kayode Fayemi and Kaduna’s Nasir el-Rufai, the other plotters, stayed away, probably warned ahead of time of the failure of their enterprise. Ondo’s Rotimi Akeredolu sat on the fence as usual, hating Mr Oshiomhole but unwilling to stake everything. It didn’t seem the Court of Appeal was independent in the ruling it gave, but it was still the only straw Mr Oshiomhole could clutch at to get the much needed reprieve he hankered after.

With the temporary collapse of the opposition against him, the APC chairman has begun to regain his composure. He probably now knows that appeasement does not pay. He had, in deference to his enemies within the party’s leadership, failed to inaugurate a few but key Southwest and Northeast replacement appointees to the NWC. Now he has quickly made amends and learnt from his mistakes. Will he, going forward, know when to stand for what is right and when to try and mollify the rage of his enemies? No one knows; for after all, those who criticise him for being abrasive and undiplomatic were the same enemies who rebuffed his placatory efforts and plotted so maliciously to skin him. Mr Oshiomhole is sometimes voluble, but at other times, he has learnt to hold his cards close to his chest, saying little, learning much, and dealing his enemies, at unsuspecting moments, mortal blows. That style worked brilliantly for him when he governed Edo; it should stand him in good stead even now.

Unlike many of his enemies, the APC chairman is mindful of his humble background and thus puts on no airs. Nor has he seemed by reason of the adversity that befell him in the past few weeks lost his bucolic sense of humour that has served him well for decades, endearing him to many far above the generosity of spirit his enemies are capable of. But whether despite these accoutrements he will not become confused as to when to stand and fight for principles is anybody’s guess. The party’s constitution is unambiguous in most of its provisions. It was precisely his attempt to implement them to the letter that incensed the high and mighty in his party, and turned them into his mortal enemies. Whether he agrees or not, his best bet is to stand with the party’s rules and guidelines, to dispense justice without fear or favour, and to continue to envision a future for the party, a party not beholden to person or interest other than party and national interests. This is a difficult proposition; but he has little choice than to stay focused.

In all this, however, there is a catch. No matter how brave and polite Mr Oshiomhole becomes, even if he were to typify the most ardent constitutionalist in his party and in Nigeria, he will still have to operate within a complex political, economic and cultural environment that is at present severely diseased and increasingly paralysing. He has his failings, as this column and many other analysts have suggested, and he needs a far better approach in handling the affairs of the party than he has done or is capable of doing. But on the subject of his last set of battles with his enemies, particularly those who ganged up against him in the past few weeks, the APC chairman is largely blameless. He lost courage to inaugurate fresh appointees into the NWC; this was, however, a weakness, not a subversion of the party’s constitution along the gross lines in which his enemies plotted futilely to unseat him without reference to party rules and guidelines. He spoke roughly to some of his colleagues and betters, especially when he was right and his enemies wrong; but this again is a failure of style rather than a perpetration of crime.

Mr Oshiomhole will fight an uphill battle to sanitise the APC, sharpen its vision, reform and mould it into an institution that will outlast its present members, and coax it until it regains its ideological vigour for today and the day after tomorrow.  For a party filled with unprincipled politicians and leaders, many of whom as governors preside over state fiefdoms, mere or principled adherence to the constitution may not suffice in the face of other parts of the society becoming disruptively diseased. The APC chairman will naturally need to refine his methods and become considerably less uncouth, but in the face of a judiciary that has lost its compass, a legislature that grovels, and an executive that is quite unable to provide the leadership, vision and impartiality for which it was elected, there is little a brilliant or determined party chairman can do.

The judiciary played an ignoble role in the Oshiomhole overthrow saga. Judges did not of course inspire the carnage, but they virtually led the attack and provided the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings for the putsch. There is no jurisprudential basis for the courts to sideline Mr Oshiomhole or empower Mr Giadom to act as chairman. Even the Court of Appeal was widely believed to have vacillated before eventually doing justice. Would the leadership of the judiciary, particularly the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) and the National Judicial Council, have the good sense and ethical fortitude to quietly call for explanations as to why judges performed so woefully and so cowardly in the Oshiomhole affair? Are they worried by how ominously politics and politicians are compromising the sanctity of the judiciary and eroding their independence, to the point that judges are lending dubious legitimacy to political coups? Do they perceive the low esteem in which the judiciary is held today? Castrated by the executive, subverted by politicians, and distracted by a most insidious form of politics in the appointment of judges, is the judiciary still worth its salt? If nothing is done to arrest the decline in the judiciary, the disease will get worse.

In the face of an executive branch that keeps vacillating at crucial moments, especially in the face of orchestrated attacks against the country’s ethical foundations, and with a judiciary hobbled by extraneous factors, a legislature so distracted that it can’t see the wood for the trees, and a civil populace groping around with a cracked moral compass, Mr Oshiomhole is likely to be turned into a survivalist than a principled and visionary party chairman anxious to safeguard the place of his party tomorrow and the day after. The APC chairman may have begun to understand his limitations, and may now be inclined to dine with the devil in order to continue in office. But that would be a pity. The PDP lost its way barely after putting one president in office. If APC is to be different, Mr Oshiomhole will have to be enabled to do much more than he has done. There is, however, nothing in the horizon to show that they would allow or enable him.