In Nigeria, the terms “the presidency”, “Aso Rock”, and “Abuja” are used in metonymic relationship to the executive branch of the federal government. In comparison to the United States on which our democracy is modelled, Aso Rock is like the White House, while Abuja is like Washington. However the presidency is not a direct equivalent of the administration in American political usage. Rather, it is a creation of President Buhari’s media team. What in the world does it mean?

Well, in Nigerian usage, it refers simultaneously to Aso Rock, Abuja, the Buhari administration, and even to the President himself. Whichever way you want to interpret the term, Buhari is top of mind, that is, he is the person that comes to mind whenever you hear or read about the presidency in Nigeria.

That is the case, however, only until you realize that, sometimes, the presidency is Garba Shehu, Buhari’s Senior Special Assistant on Media. At other times, it is Femi Adesina, the President’s Special Adviser on Media. At yet at other times, it is the opinion of the President’s men or cabal. This is believed to be the extended sense of the term.

It would appear that the goal of the usage is to provide a screen between President Buhari and the public, thereby shielding him from direct communication with the public, if not responsibility and accountability, forgetting that the buck stops on his desk. That’s why it is the presidency that speaks on major issues rather than the President.

In that regard, the brains behind “the presidency” have been very successful. Their success, however, is one of Buhari’s outstanding failures, because it allows two of his major foibles, taciturnity and tardiness, to come to the fore. Buhari neither talks nor acts as expected of a President. And when he does, it is always way too late or inadequate.

One example will suffice for now. This past Monday, August 2, 2021, the tenure of as many as 14 heads of major agencies in the Ministry of Education expired and they reportedly handed over to the most senior officer in their agencies. They were all appointed on August 1, 2016, and inaugurated into office the following day.

True, this has become common practice in the federal bureaucracy, but it has been taken to new heights by President Buhari. Ever since he was first inaugurated as President in 2015, he has never filled any vacancy on time. This is particularly true of vacancies in the Ministry of Education, a delay now playing out again before our eyes. This practice must stop, because it comes with numerous setbacks for accountability, continuity, and good governance.

First, the intervening period between end of tenure and the official appointment of a replacement is fraught with many dangers. How is full accountability guaranteed in the handing over process? How can collusion be averted between the official handing over and “the most senior official” who unceremoniously takes over? Recall that both officials would have worked together for possibly five years. How long will the acting official be in office and how can corruption be checked during the temporary tenure?

I raise these questions not to impugn the integrity of the officials, who handed over last Monday, and those who took over from them; but to point out the loopholes in the process. I also raise them because they could have been avoided altogether.

Buhari, who appointed these officials is still in government. Even if he was succeeded by another politician, there should be records of who took which office and when. In Buhari’s case, he had five full years to consider the extension of their term or replace them. Why wait until their term has ended and still no action?

This is a typical Buhari practice. Recall, for example, the long delay in appointing a Chief Justice after the retirement of Justice Mahmud Mohammed in 2016. Justice Walter Onnoghen, being the most senior Justice on the Supreme Court, was appointed in acting capacity. His appointment was confirmed nearly four months, only to be forced to resign prematurely about two years later under highly controversial circumstances.

Situations like this could easily be avoided. In this digital age, record keeping should no longer be a problem, no matter how large the bureaucracy is. All that is needed is a combination of appropriate computer hardware, software, and well trained ICT hands.

The last time I checked, the Ministry of Education and each of its agencies budgeted for ICT and computers. Save for the excellent job the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has done in this regard, you would wonder what the other agencies have done with this budget item. Even more importantly, you would wonder what effort the supervising Ministry of Education has put into keeping track of personnel matters in these agencies to avoid prolonged vacancies in key agencies and federal universities.

All that is needed is to record every appointment made, date by date, and the duration of tenure. Then get a person in the Personnel or Establishment Department to keep track of every appointment and notify the appropriate ministries six months to the end of tenure. Indeed, appropriate personnel management software exists that could be used to flag such information and bring it to the attention of the appropriate official.

In many states, it is the office of the Head of Service that keeps track of such matters. The example of Osun state is instructive. The current Head of Service, Dr. Olowogboyega Oyebade, a cerebral essayist and public intellectual in his own right, publishes a weekly newsletter that contains vital information about the activities of government and personnel matters, including who retires and when.

This brings me back to the president and the presidency. How is information within the government acted upon by the Head of Service, the Chief of Staff, and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation? Assuming that the president may not be able to keep track of everything, what is the presidency (in the extended sense) doing about collating information within the government and advising the President about same? Why do the president and presidency always wait to react, instead of being proactive?

Only a lame president and presidency will continue to act this way and expect effective governance and favourable results.

By Niyi Akinnaso

Two of the critical mandates for the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board are (1) to conduct the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination and (2) to coordinate and oversee the admission process into tertiary institutions in the country. Unfortunately, until recently, these two missions were hardly successfully fulfilled, because JAMB’s attempts to fulfill them always fell into the cesspool of endemic corruption that has gripped the country.

JAMB only began to record appreciable successes after Professor Is-haq Oleyede took office on August 1, 2016, as the new Registrar of the Board. It is not clear how much of the Board’s activities he knew in advance of his new role. What is clear is that he quickly initiated several changes to enhance the quality of the Board’s examinations and the efficacy of the admission process. The changes were wide-ranging, from who applies and how to apply to who takes the exam, where the exam is taken, how it is taken, and, ultimately, how a candidate is admitted or otherwise.

The questions the new Board sought to answer included: Was the person who applied for the exam the writer of the exam? What illegal “ammunition” was brought into the exam hall? Did the exam hall meet necessary requirements for the security of the exam and its invigilation? Did the exam questions test appropriate competencies in the relevant subjects? Did all relevant stakeholders (candidates, testing centres, parents, universities) play by the exam and admission rules?

It took only one examination cycle to figure out that these questions revolve specifically around examination malpractices and the fraudulent practices of associated with the admission process. And the answers require following the candidate from the application process all the way to placement in a higher institution. It was hoped that the sanctity of the exam and the admission process would be assured if this journey were properly monitored.

This explains why Oloyede steered the Board toward a crusade against exam malpractices. The range of malpractices and successes have been heavily documented in Nigerian newspapers (see, especially, Daily Trust, April 29, 2021). The outcome of this effort includes the pervasive use of technology for candidate registration and monitoring at exam centres and admission processing; the delisting of over 100 Computer-Based Test centers, the installation of CCT cameras in all existing 700 or so CBT centers throughout the country; the variation of questions in the same subject across candidates to limit knowledge sharing in the exam hall;  and the introduction of a Central Admissions Processing System to curb under-the-table admission. Today, UTME exam malpractices have been reduced to below 0.01% of its past peak.

Nevertheless, as Oloyede admitted on two recent occasions, the obstacles to free and fair UTME exams in Nigeria are many, because exam candidates are not the only offenders. Parents, hired exam mercenaries, CBT centres, invigilators and security officials are all accomplices. Some parents participate in cheating or encourage their children to cheat, because they want their children admitted to the university at all cost, regardless of their abilities. Other accomplices want to make quick money off the parents or the exam candidates.

The foregoing only goes to show that the Board’s task is, indeed, an uphill battle. For one thing, UTME exams cannot be divorced from exam malpractices elsewhere in the country. Nor can exam malpractices be divorced from the endemic corruption that has gripped the Nigerian society from top to bottom.

The implication then is that JAMB’s effort to cure exam malpractices can only be a drop in the bucket in a country where fighting corruption is a continuous government project, revealing fresh corruption cases daily without any indication of abatement.

Even universities and other higher institutions are victims of this national malaise. For example, JAMB’s effort to sanitize the admission process by implementing the government’s guidelines continues to be undermined by higher institutions and the parents, who corrupt the process.

Here’s how Oloyede put it to a Senate Committee as recently as last week: “There’s also indiscipline from the tertiary institutions who admit against the federal government’s policy guidelines as mandated by the Ministry of Education. At the end of the day, after admitting outside these policies, they put pressure on students at the final moments towards graduation to come back to us for what they call regularisation.”

This is not at all surprising given the corruption associated with the appointment of Vice-Chancellors, who are the Chief Executives of these institutions (see, for example, Professor Ayodeji Olukoju’s The way Nigeria selects Vice-Chancellors is deeply flawed, The Conversation, April 5, 2021). This goes to show that the whole fish eventually stinks once it begins to stink from the head.

Initially, JAMB’s crusade against exam malpractices elicited some negative responses. In particular, questions were raised as to whether JAMB was not outstepping its bounds by policing examinations. The Board was also criticized for interfering with university autonomy with regard to admissions. Having participated in JAMB’s policy meetings and evaluated the nature and range of malpractices, I am more than convinced that higher education in this country may have no future without JAMB’s ongoing crusade against UTME exam malpractices and the effective monitoring of the admission process through CAPS.

What is important now is how to institutionalize the ongoing changes and in order to sustain the gains made so far. Much too often in this country, the light from good vision often dims with the exit of the visionary. True, there are now structures in place to sustain the changes. The question is whether there is sufficient human capital to sustain them.

In this regard, JAMB needs to establish or strengthen two units, one focusing on quality assurance and the other on security of the examinations and the effectiveness of the admission process. The quality of the exams in each subject needs constant improvement in order to ensure the global competitiveness of exam candidates. The same unit will also ensure that higher institutions follow due process in the admission protocol.

The job of securing the sanctity of the examinations also needs special hands with security backgrounds, who will also be computer literate enough to use technology in its surveillance activities. Both of these units should work hand in hand with the Board’s ICT department to ensure the optimal application of technology to problem solving.

The new JAMB is on a good course. And there should be no going back.

By Niyi Akinnaso

Neither Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, nor Sunday Adeyemo (Igboho), the leader of Ilana Omo Yoruba, is of major concern to Nigerians, especially those in Southern Nigeria, where the two gentlemen hail from and which has been the sole terrain of their activities. The former has restricted his activities to the Southeast and parts of the South-south, while the latter has restricted his to the Southwest.

Both men have three things in common. One, they want self actualization for their people. Two, each has a small following. Three, neither man nor his group is fully embraced by his people: local traditional, religious, and political leaders maintain a distance from them.

It must be noted, however, that they employ different tactics. In the Southeast, Kanu seems to be attacking his own people for not supporting his cause. There are ways in which he may be said to have carried his agenda too far. He also made himself a targe of hunt by jumping bail when he was first indicted.

Igboho, on the other hand, has been vending off outsiders attacking his own people, mainly herdsmen from the North, and rallying support for his cause of self actualization project by holding rallies across the Southwest. True, Kanu’s followers may have engaged in some skirmishes with his own people in the Southeast, Igboho’s group has gone about its self actualization campaign peacefully. Going after both men with the same zeal is laughable.

Why are these men and their groups not embraced by their people? It is because the focus of the people’s concerns is different. They are not in favour of secession. They want to remain in Nigeria. But they want optimal security, not word-of-mouth security, so they can live in peace, not in pieces. They want equity-a situation in which everyone is treated equally before the law and in the distribution of political goods and social rewards. They want their country to look like other countries the elite go to get treated, to educate their children, to enjoy a good vacation so that much of the money made in the country could be spent within the country.

Southern Nigerians especially have been vocal about three major wants: One, they want their farms to grow food for local consumption and for sale, rather than to feed cows whose herders carry AK-47 guns to kill the farmers, rape their wives, and waste their children or kidnap their elites (monarchs, businessmen, professors, and so on) for ransom or for murder, if ransom is delayed.

Second, they want major modifications to how the country is organized and governed. They want a review of how resources are distributed from a distant centre, which turns federating units into beggars. Specifically, they want more powers devolved to the federating units, be they regions or states, depending on the eventual reconfiguration. Such additional powers will include the ability of each regional or state government to manage its own local government areas and control its police in order to maximize local security. They also want a reallocation formula that will allow the federating units to keep much of the money they make and only pay a percentage to the centre. Only such additional resources will allow them to adequately deploy additional powers to full advantage.

These are not new demands. However, their escalation in recent years is in response to escalating insecurity in the land and the perceived insensitivity of the federal government to the situation. There is a long catalogue of the government’s unresponsiveness. This is especially true of the destructive activities of terrorists and bandits in the North, of Fulani herdsmen in the South and the Middle Belt, and of kidnappers across the country.

Neither Kanu nor Igboho would have had any agenda to pursue had the federal government provided adequate and needed security and responded to the calls for restructuring the country. It is in this sense that President Muhammadu Buhari may be said to have constructed these two men in their new role, by creating the atmosphere of neglect that led them to agitations for self actualization.

The enduring zeal with which the government went after Kanu from the days of Python dance to a 2-year international trail and the post-midnight military raid of Igboho’s residence is only negatively matched by the same government’s perpetual neglect of the incessant demand for protection and restructuring by the majority of the population.

It is in this sense that the arrest and the raid could be regarded as unnecessary diversions. They keep the federal government unnecessarily busy, while neglecting the real problems of terrorism, banditry, herdsmen-farmers conflicts, kidnapping for ransom, and other security breaches.

Take the case of Igboho for example and compare the totality of his activities with those of marauding herdsmen, wielding AK-47 rifles in the open. How many people have Igbobo and his group members ever killed? Zero, compared to thousands by herdsmen. But how many herdsmen have been arrested and their weapons seized? None, compared to the alleged seizure of weapons and the killings at Igboho’s residence.

As observers watch the government’s recent actions, questions cannot but be raised about the government’s priorities and about fairness. How can the arrest Kanu and Igboho lead to, or substitute for, large scale security in the land?

What is unclear to right thinking observers is why the government and its handlers don’t see these actions as reinforcing the people’s belief that this government is either not serious about security or is just buying time until the next election cycle.

One thing is clear, though. This President continues to leave room for questioning his suitability for democratic governance. The events leading to the banning of Twitter and the raiding of Igboho’s residence show a President uncomfortable with criticism and disrespectful of fundamental rights.

Whatever method Buhari may have employed to create diversion, Southerners are not buying it. This point was forcefully made on their behalf on Monday by the 17 Southern Governors. In the communique issued after the meeting, they emphasized the need for “the politics of equity, fairness, justice, progress, and peaceful co-existence between and amongst its (the nation’s) people”. In another oblique reference to the President, they also emphasized the need for the Chief Security Officer of the State to be informed, whenever there is need for any security operation. Finally, they touched on key aspects of restructuring in need of attention.

By Niyi Akinnaso

Earlier in the year, I provided a review of Cuba’s strategies for combating the scourge of COVID-19, focusing on its biomedical capabilities and the simultaneous pursuit of clinical trials in five different vaccine candidates. The following quote provides a partial summary of the article:

“Of Cuba’s five vaccine candidates, Soberana 02 and Abdala have reached the most advanced stage of Phase III clinical trials, the former being a little ahead of the latter. Both have proved to be safe and effective in clinical trials, with little or no side effects. Even the World Health Organization has also confirmed that the two vaccine candidates in Phase III clinical trials were effective and safe in previous clinical trials. However, how effective on a large scale remains to be seen” (Cuba’s strategies to combat COVID-19, The Nation, March 31, 2021).

The verdict is now out. Soberana 02 and Abdala have surpassed significantly the World Health Organization’s 50 percent benchmark for vaccine safety and effectiveness. Specifically, Soberana 02 is 62% effective, while Abdala is 92.28% effective.

Some clarification is necessary here to explain the discrepancy in the efficacy of the two vaccine candidates. Each of them is a three-shot vaccine. Abdala’s 92.28% efficacy was recorded after all three doses had been administered, whereas Soberana 02’s efficacy was recorded only after two doses. There is a chance, therefore, that Sobera’s efficacy may shoot up after completion of the third dose.

After three shots, the results put Abdala in the league of COVID-19 vaccines with over 90% efficacy, namely, USA’s Pfizer-BioNTech (95%) and Moderna (94.1.1%) as well Russia’s Sputnik V COVID-19 (91.6%). The efficacy results of the clinical trials of Abdala also surpass those of other vaccines in use, namely, UK’s Oxford-AstraZeneca (82.4%); and China’s Sinopharm (79%) and CoronaVAC (51%).

I was not surprised by the high efficacy of the Abdala vaccine. Nor did it surprise Jose Moya of the World Health Organization, who, incidentally, has been in Cuba for the past two years as the representative of the Pan American Health Organization, a regional organization of the WHO with 27 country offices.

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As Moya himself admitted, his trust in the Cuban figures is based on Cuba’s track record: Cuba’s biomedical industry is the most advanced in the Caribbean and Latin America, producing first class medical training and biopharmaceutical research scientists. Not only does Cuba produce over 80% of all vaccines used in the country, it’s healthcare system has also been performing steadily well for decades-so much so that medical staff are among Cuba’s major exports. It’s doctors have been “exported” to over 50 countries worldwide, many even during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

In addition to safety and high effecacy, Abdala is also significant in creativity. Unlike  Moderna and Pfizer-BinNTech vaccines, which use the mRNA technology and others, such as Oxford-AstraZeneca and Sputnik V, which use some virus as vector, Abdala uses a different approach, which carries a portion of the spike protein that the coronavirus uses to bind to human cells. Yeast is used to bind the protein onto the receptors of the virus’ own spike protein to trigger an immune reaction.

Cuba’s COVID-19 vaccine feat must be understood against the 62-year punitive embargo placed against the small island nation of 11 million people by the United States. Although President Barack Obama sought to reverse the embargo by visiting Cuba in 2016, former President Donald Trump did all he could to reverse the easing trend. It is now left to incumbent President Joe Biden (who was Obama’s Vice President), to reverse Trump’s re-tightening of the embargo.

Already, global opinion favours Cuba on the issue. As recently as June 23, 2021, the United Nations again voted overwhelmingly in favour of the resolution on lifting the embargo against Cuba: Of the 189 member nations present, 184 voted in favour, while three abstained. Only the United States and Israel voted against the resolution.

There are several compelling reasons to lift the embargo now. For one thing, the Soviet Union, which used to assist Cuba is no more and the US-Soviet (now only Russia) cold war has shifted to cyber war between the two countries, with Russia as the aggressor.

Second, Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who defeated the US-backed Cuban government, is no more. Even his brother, who took over from him, has surrendered power. It is high time the US consigned the shame of the defeat to history.

Third, if only on humanitarian grounds, the embargo should be lifted because of its severe economic strain on the Cuban masses. In his recent presentation to the United Nations General Assembly on the effects of the embargo, the Secretary-General noted that Cuba has recorded billions of dollars in losses over six decades of embargo by the United States. The Secretary-General summed it up this way: “Taking into account the depreciation of the dollar against the price of gold on the international market, the embargo has caused quantifiable losses of more than $1,377,998 million”.

This economic hardship notwithstanding, Cuba has continued to weather the storm. While other nations were scampering to purchase vaccines made by high-income nations, Cuba declined to do so. It also refused to participate in the COVAX project, viewing both stances as indications of sovereign pride. More importantly, however, it allowed the nation’s scientists to focus on vaccine production.

There are lessons for the Nigerian government and the world to learn from Cuba. Strong leadership, effective governance strategies, and sustainability of  programmes, projects, and goals. From inception, the Cuban government developed elaborate education, healthcare, and infrastructure projects, which have sustained the country through thick and thin.

It is as well that Nigeria leads Africa in voting consistently in favour of removing the US embargo on Cuba. It is equally interesting that Nigeria maintains cordial diplomatic relations with the island nation. Interestingly, Nigerian Ambassador Ben Okaye presented his credentials in Havana on the same day that Nigeria voted with Cuba at the General Assembly on removing the embargo on Cuba.

The Nigerian government will do even better to join other nations in line for Cuba’s vaccine to accelerate the pace of vaccination in Nigeria. Already, over one million Cubans have been fully vaccinated, about the same number as Nigeria. Yet, Cuba’s population is only about 11 million, whereas Nigeria’s is over 200 million.

Earlier in the year, I even went further to urge the Nigerian government to collaborate with Cuba in vaccine production. It is not too late to do so.

By Niyi Akinnaso

As of yesterday, Tuesday, June 22, 2021, the coronavirus that came to be known as COVID-19 had infected nearly 180 million people and killed nearly four million worldwide. If the data are correct, compared to high and middle income countries, the figures remain relatively low for African countries, with just over 5 million infections and about 138,000 deaths on a continent with a population of 1.3 billion.

With its own population at over 200 million and the largest country on the continent, Nigeria could be said to be the luckiest of all, with just 167,292 infections and 2118 deaths (as of June 21, 2021). Nigeria’s luck is better understood against the fate of Brazil with comparable population and climate, but very high levels of infections (nearly 18 million) and deaths (502,817). What made Brazil’s a very bad case is that its President, Jair Bolsonaro, never took the virus seriously and held the vaccine in scorn. As a result, he made no preparations for either of them.

However, let’s hope that Nigeria’s luck will never be tested as the third wave of infections visits Africa as it has visited Brazil and India lately. While high and middle income countries have been able to cope well with the third (or fourth) wave of infections, Africa’s low income countries may not be able to do as well, because of the triple whammy of weak governance, poor health systems, and low rates of vaccination. Yet, as the Director of the African Center for Disease Control warned last week.

One of the major factors behind the recent rise in infections is the appearance of new variants of the virus. Right now, there are seven known variants, although some of them are still under investigation. The seven variants and their countries of origin are: Alpha or B.1.17 (United Kingdom); Beta B.1.351 (South Africa); Gamma or P1 (Brazil); Delta or B.1.617.2 and Kappa or B.1.617.1 (India); Epsilon or B.1.427/429 (United States); and Eta or B.1.525. All the variants so far were discovered between March 2020 and January 2021.

The variants result from genetic mutations in the virus as it evolves during disease outbreak. Usually, the more people there are to infect, the longer a virus stays with the population. The longer the virus is around, the higher the possibility of genetic mutation. That may well be why the variants identified so far occurred in countries with high and enduring infection rates, such as the UK, India, and Brazil.

The fact that a variant has been identified in Nigeria also speaks to the continued evolution of the virus within the country. Even more importantly, it calls into question the reported low figures of infection for the country. Since infection rates are also a reflection of how many people are tested, it cannot be said that Nigeria captured a reasonable percentage of infected people. For at least 15 months of alleged continuous testing, only 2,266, 591 people were tested in a population of over two million! It is also well known that most people failed to adhere to the recommended mitigation measures, thus increasing the possibility of infection.

Although some of the variants are still under investigation, especially for their potential for increased virulence, transmissibility, and poor response to available vaccines. So far, at least two of the variants have been found to be quite virulent, highly transmissible, and adamant to the first generation of vaccines.

Still further bad news: The technology for testing and identifying the new variants is as yet not widely available. It is therefore possible that the variants have travelled further than we think across the African continent. It is safe to assume that all the variants are now present in Nigeria, given the high rate of international travel in recent months.

The good news, though, is that as soon as the resistance of the new variants to available vaccines were discovered, scientists again went to the lab to tweak the codes once the new variants were genetically sequenced. And that is the beauty of the mRNA vaccine technology. Once an effective vaccine has been made, it can easily be reconfigured to suit the genetic structure of any variant of the virus.

Even more importantly, this technology is now being tested for protection against a whole host of diseases, including cancer. I will elaborate on this development in another column.

The bad news, however, is that these new variants are already crisscrossing the globe as their hosts travel from place to place, mirroring the way the original virus was quickly spread across the world. And this is happening at a time when most countries have lowered their guards, with government officials and citizens alike paying little or no attention to the virus. As we have seen, Brazil and India are paying high costs for their leaders laxity (Brazil) or relapse (India) and for putting politics over public health.

What now can Nigeria do to avert disaster, should the third wave take hold in the country? Having shunned the entreaty to seek partnership with vaccine manufacturers, the best bet for now is to secure enough vaccine doses to vaccinate as many people as possible.

The appropriate officials chose instead to invest billions in vaccine doses, which have yet to came. This one-off, myopic approach to problem solving is the staple of the government’s approach. It focuses on solving the problem at hand, without planning on how to solve the same or similar problems when they occur in the future. Investment in vaccine manufacturing would have guaranteed the necessary solution to today’s problem, while also preparing local scientists to produce vaccines for similar diseases tomorrow.

Nevertheless, given the path they’ve chosen to follow, It is high time the officials followed the money and brought the vaccines home. This call is the more urgent now against the threat of a third wave and the abysmally low vaccine rate in the country. As of June 20, 2021, just over 2 million people had received their first dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine made available by COVAX, while less than a million have received their second dose.

In the absence of vaccine supply, it is very important to alert the public again about the potential for a spike in infections and the need to hype adherence to established mitigation measures. At the same time, Nigerians should have known by now that their lives are in their own hands.

By Niyi Akinnaso

Two days ago, Monday, June 14, 2021, Kizzmekia Shonda Corbett (Kizzy, as she is popularly called) reported for duty at Harvard University. She joined the world-renowned Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases. At the same time, she will hold another appointment as the Shutzer Assistant Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

Remember her?

She is the 35-year old African-American woman credited with the groundbreaking research that led to the development of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, using the mRNA technology. The vaccine she pioneered was the first COVID-19 vaccine to go into trial in March 2020. It was the first of its kind in the world and the fastest progress ever toward a vaccine for a pathogen never encountered before.

It is not surprising, then, that, in announcing her appointment, the Harvard School of Public Health added that Dr. Corbett will head the new Coronaviruses & Other Relevant Emerging Infectious Diseases Lab “to study and understand the interface between hosts’ immune systems and viruses that cause respiratory disease, with the goal of informing development of novel and potentially universal vaccines”.

I began to track Dr. Corbett’s professional career since March 3, 2020, when she was the only Black person, the youngest, and only woman among a group of top scientists, who received former President Donald Trump at the National Institute of Health, where she was a fellow at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Vaccine Research Center.

As the lead scientist in the lab’s vaccine development research, she was the one who explained to Trump how the vaccine being developed uses a genetic code sequence, known as messenger RNA (mRNA), to prompt the body’s immune system to react when the coronavirus spike protein is detected. The vaccine would then block the infection process.

How did Dr. Corbett come about this achievement and what messages is she sending to Nigeria and the world? I can think of three or four.

To start with, she is telling Nigerian youths to start early and get focused. Rather than join gangs, fraternities, or cults, or go after iPhone or other material things, it pays off to focus on one’s studies from Day 1. Dr. Corbett went to public schools all the way.

Her experience also points to the significant role of mentorship. Her Elementary School teacher detected her promise early. She told her parents, when she was in the fourth grade, to support her by placing her in advanced classes. The same teacher would later describe Dr. Corbett as “The best in my 30 years of teaching”.

Dr. Corbett did not only start early, she also focused on what she wanted to be. First, without knowing precisely what type of scientist she would be, she began to focus on Mathematics and the sciences. While in High School, she began to embrace biomedical research, when she had her first experience in working in research labs with scientists. She would spend her following summers in various labs, learning and participating in biomedical research.

Starting early and focusing on her studies earned her accolades and scholarships for her bachelors and doctorate degrees as well as internship at the NIH. She would later join the Vaccine Research Center of the Institute as a postdoctoral research fellow and remain there for the following six years.

A key experience that really prepared her for vaccine research was her doctoral dissertation research in Sri Lanka, where she studied how people produce antibodies in response to dengue fever, and how the genetics of dengue fever impact the severity of a disease. As part of her dissertation research, she worked as a visiting scholar at Genetech Research Institute in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Her meritorious dissertation work and her previous internship at the NIH earned her a research fellowship at the Institute’s Vaccine Research Center. While working on previous coronaviruses (SARS and MERS) at the Center’s lab and elsewhere, she was able to identify a simple way to make spike proteins that are stabilized, immunogenetic, and manufacturable. It was this experience that prepared the way for quickly developing the mRNA vaccine as soon as the genes of the new coronavirus vaccine (COVID-19) were sequenced.

From a small town and little known Elementary School in North Carolina, Dr. Corbett became the saviour of the world. Time Magazine quickly recognized her as one of 100 top innovators. In her profile for the Magazine, world famous Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, puts it modestly this way: Dr. Corbett has “been central to the development of the Moderna mRNA vaccine and the Eli Lilly therapeutic monoclonal antibody that were first to enter clinical trials in the U.S.” and that “her work will have a substantial impact on ending the worst respiratory-disease pandemic in more than 100 years.”

There are numerous lessons here for the Nigerian government at federal, state, and local levels. There are thousands of Corbetts in the Nigerian educational system, from elementary grades to postgraduate level. Unfortunately, however, the system no longer provides the necessary infrastructure and ecosystem for desirable educational outcomes. Facilities are poor, if at all available. Teachers are neither well trained nor sufficiently remunerated. Classrooms are poorly equipped or not equipped at all. Students have become disinterested in learning in environments that fail to nurture their potentials.

The hiring of Dr. Corbett by Harvard University is in itself a message to Nigerian universities on how to maintain high standards or raise them. Having trained and worked in the American university system for over three decades, I can imagine the “juicy” offer made to Dr. Corbett to move from NIH to Harvard. As indicated earlier, the offer includes a dual appointment and a new lab to head.

True, Nigerian universities are constrained in terms of how much salary they could pay, but nothing stops them from creatively attracting and rewarding outstanding scholars, researchers, and even public servants (who qualify). But, no, our faculty specializes in going on strike for remuneration and past allowances, fighting for unmerited promotion, or struggling to become the next Vice Chancellor. Unfortunately, some University administrations and even Governing Councils contribute to the malaise.

Finally, whatever happened to the billions allocated to vaccine research in Nigeria? And where are the vaccines claimed to have been purchased for billions of Naira?

By Niyi Akinnaso

“When sorrows come, they come not in single spies, but in battalions” -Claudius, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Perhaps no statement could have captured the current Nigerian situation better than the above Shakespearean dictum. Virtually everything that could go wrong has gone wrong with Nigeria, earning the country negative assessments on all international indices. Only last week, John Campbell and Robert Rotberg piggybacked on these negative assessments to declare that Nigeria has failed or is on the brink of failure.

While responding to these assessments, by denying the negative label, the Nigerian government was caught again in yet another problem. In responding to escalating insecurity in the Southeast, President Muhammadu Buhari, in a tweet, invoked the civil war of 1967-70 as a benchmark for treating the IPOB separatist agitators in the region. Understandably, the reference to the civil war angered the people in the region, leading to angry protests by them.

Although the President was right that many of the separatist agitators were not born during the civil war, its use as a reference point for “treating” them was unpresidential. Indeed, the reference to the civil was unnecessary. Buhari cannot be excused by attributing the tweet to his social media handlers. They merely transcribed what the President said and put the text and the video on Twitter.

True, it is more or less second nature for the powerful in Nigeria to threaten subordinates and the less powerful, Buhari’s threatening tweet is utterly insensitive of the lingering scar of the civil war on the Igbo psyche. It also adds a painful gloss to their feeling of marginalization by the Buhari administration. Their protest against the tweet is clearly understandable.

Equally understandable is Twitter’s immediate decision to delete the tweet and the video for violating its “safety rules”, which frown at violence, threats, harassment, hateful conduct, and child sexual exploitation, among others.

Buhari’s tweet was not the first to be taken down by the platform for threatening others, or for abetting violence. Former US President Donald Trump’s tweet was not only deleted twice for this reason, his account was permanently suspended after the second deletion. Although he had lost reelection, he was still in office when all this happened.

It was not only physical violence that violated Twitter’s safety rules. Symbolic violence is also frowned upon. That’s why the tweets by President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Nicola Maduro of Venezuela, and Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, were also deleted, either for promoting ineffective drugs to cure COVID-19  (Bolsonaro and Maduro) or for denigrating vaccines that have been proven to be effective against the virus (Ayatollah). Twitter’s reading of their tweets led the platform authorities to believe that the unhelpful messages from these leaders could, and in fact did, put millions of people in danger as the coronavirus ravaged their countries.

Buhari’s reaction to the deletion of his tweet, by banning Twitter completely from Nigeria, is yet another instance of his slip into authoritarianism. The ignominious action puts him in the company of authoritarian leaders, who have taken the same action or built firewalls for surveilling users of digital media in their countries and even beyond. They include the leaders of China, Russia, North Korea, Turkey, Vietnam, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirate, and Iran. Notwithstanding the pretend elections in some of these countries, none of them is a democracy. Rather, they are the hotbed of digital authoritarianism.

No wonder then that leaders of major democracies have appealed to Buhari to lift the ban on Twitter. They see the platform as a vehicle for freedom of expression, which is central to the nurturing of democracies throughout the world. Neither these leaders nor Nigerians for that matter would like to see Buhari slip into the authoritarian days of military dictatorship when, as Head of State, he issued Decree No 4 to inoculate his government against the free press.

Also regrettable is the Nigerian government’s excuse for banning Twitter, when everyone knew that it was no more than a knee-jerk reaction to the deletion of the President’s tweet. Why not ban Twitter much earlier? Blaming the platform for “activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence” flies foul. It is laughable in the face of persistent insecurity, political corruption, out-of-control borrowings, educational decline, and infrastructure decay. If all these problems were addressed, there would be little or no activity online for the government to complain about.

The difference between the “activities” on these platforms and the President’s action is that the President has all the power to muster followers and all security agencies to enforce his threat. The world witnessed the influence of presidential power in the United States in January 2021, when Trump’s followers stormed the US Capitol to prevent legislators from certifying the election that he had lost. However, because of the strength of American institutions, Trump’s tactic failed and the insurrectionists have been rounded up and charged.

The irony about Buhari’s Twitter ban is that it was his administration that actually popularised the platform in Nigeria in recent years just as Trump did in the United States. All members of Buhari’s cabinet have Twitter handles. So do Governors, Commissioners, and legislators in national and state assemblies. It had become the major platform for sharing information with the public and getting the people’s feedback. The Nigerian Center for Disease Control has been using it to great effect in providing updates about COVID-19. In this sense, Twitter is like a prescription drug, which has side effects. You continue to take it because it is beneficial to your recovery. You have to tolerate the side effects.

The bottomline really is that the Twitter story has created an unnecessary distraction, by allowing the government to focus on illegitimate agitators, who are advocating secession, at the expense of legitimate agitators, who are advocating restructuring. The separatists want change through violent means, while the restructurenists want change through constitutional means. Buhari’s tweet indicates that he wants to meet separatist agitators with violence but he cares less about the agitation for restructuring the country. Yet, one of the major goals of restructuring is to avoid continued separatist agitations.

At the end of the day, Buhari’s Twitter ban is a serious mistake. If the goal is to prevent a certain group from using the platform for communication, it will move to another platform. In the meantime, Twitter’s useful service to his administration would have been lost. And the security problems will sadly persist.