Category: Wednesday

Niyi Akinnaso

WE have the largest number of poor people in the world, most of them in Northern Nigeria. Nigeria also has the largest number of out of school children, virtually all of them in Northern Nigeria.

—Nasir el-Rufai, Governor of Kaduna State, at the Northern Youth Summit on Saturday, July 6, 2019

In the North-western and North-eastern parts of Nigeria, more than 60 per cent of the population live in extreme poverty … the 19 Northern states, which accounts for over 54 per cent of Nigeria’s population and 70 per cent of its landmass, collectively generate, only 21 per cent of the total sub-national IGR in the year 2017.

—Aliko Dangote, speaking at the Kaduna Investment Summit on Wednesday, April 3, 2019.

From time immemorial, regional problems have been central to the formation and development of kingdoms, empires, and modern states.  However, the nature and effects of regional problems vary across time and space. In some cases, the problems are complicated by religion. In other cases, ethnicity is a key factor.

There are also cases where social and economic divisions loom large just as there are others where the desire to preserve people’s rights and liberty is foregrounded.  Sometimes, one or the other of these factors could be highlighted to mask the others. Any of these factors could derail the unity or development of a kingdom, empire, or state. A convergence of two or more factors could pose even more serious challenges.

For example, in the Southern United States, the desire to preserve slavery for economic reasons led the 13 Confederate states in the South to fight a bitter civil war, although apologists of the war often couch the reasons in terms of the preservation of liberty and independence. Residues of the division between the South and the rest of the United States loom large today, especially in race relations and democratic politics.

The regional problem is even more pronounced in contemporary Italy. It was Antonio Gramsci, who problematized the regional issue in that country in his now famous The Southern Question, published in 1926.

In the essay, Gramsci not only highlighted the social problems of Southern Italy, where he came from, he also outlined a theory by which class-regional alliances were employed by the Fascist government to maintain a hegemonic hold on power. The alliances involved creating a bridge between the Northern proletariat and the Southern peasantry.

Yet, despite the Italian government’s investment in the South to pull up the region, its backwardness relative to Northern Italy continues to stand out.  As indicated below, many factors are responsible for the fate of Southern Italy, making it one of the less developed areas in Europe.

If Northern Nigeria and Southern Italy were flipped, then the Italian situation would provide an instructive analogy to the regional problem in Nigeria, where the focus has been on the Northern question. To be sure, certain features are unique to each of the two regions in their respective countries, but there are interesting shared features to justify such an analogy. Correspondingly, Northern Italy compares to Southern Nigeria in developmental strides, including industrial growth, per capita income, contribution to GDP, and so on.

First, both Southern Italy and Northern Nigeria share higher unemployment and poverty rates than other regions in their respective countries. On the one hand, the unemployment rate in Southern Italy has ranged between 15  and 20 percent in the last five years, while the average unemployment rate in the country as a whole is about 9 percent.

On the other hand, the average unemployment rate of over 35 percent across Northern Nigeria has been consistently higher than the rest of the country at about 27 percent. When underemployment figures are factored in, over 30 percent of Southern Italians have little or no employment, while over 50 percent of Northern Nigerians are in a similar category.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the poverty rate in Southern Italy and Northern Nigeria is much higher than the rest of their respective countries. Furthermore, the risk of poverty is also considerably higher in both regions than the rest of the country. That risk is accentuated by relative lack of education.

Second, both Southern Italy and Northern Nigeria are more educationally backward than the rest of the country. They contain the majority of out-of-school children and school dropouts in their countries. Unfortunately, the situation has been getting worse, rather than better, in Northern Nigeria, as indicated in the opening quotes.

A recent letter by legendary Civil Servant, Ahmed Joda, to the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, shows that the situation in Northern Nigeria is rooted in history as it is in Southern Italy. According to Joda, who was the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education in 1971, only 250 candidates from the North were found qualified and were awarded Federal Government Scholarship in that year, whereas 2,750 candidates from the South got the same award.

Of course, Northern leaders cried lopsidedness then and the Federal Government, controlled by Northerners most of the time since then, has used several methods to “compensate” the North. Almost 50 years later, the change has been for the worse, rather than for the better.

Again, el-Rafai sums it all up in his speech to the Northern Youth Forum: “Northern Nigeria has become the centre of drug abuse, gender violence, banditry, kidnapping, and terrorism. We have also been associated with a high divorce rate and breakdown of families.” The situation compares to some extent with Southern Italy noted for organized crime, drug abuse, and “underground” economy, often controlled by the Mafia.

Yet another feature shared by Southern Italy and Northern Nigeria is a state-dependency mentality by which the people wait for government largesse—government jobs or share of government funds. The result is unbridled corruption and appalling lack of transparency. The almajiri image of begging for food with bowl-in-hand is symbolic of the state-dependency mentality of the region. While the Governors and Emirs distribute the largesse in Northern Nigeria, the Mafia does the same in Southern Italy. The result at the end of the day is little or no development of the region.

Dangote’s injunction to Northern leaders is now more urgent than ever: “Northern Nigeria will continue to fall behind if the respective states governments do not move to close the development gap”.

 Niyi Akinnaso

Did the scientists cry wolf, who spelled doom for Africa as the scourge of the COVID-19 infections ravaged the world? A random look at the predictions reveals a scary outcome. For example, the regional World Health Organisation for Africa predicted in April 2020 that the coronavirus cases in Africa could increase exponentially from mere thousands in mid April to as high as 10 million within three to six months.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa postulated a more dire prediction. According to its own modelling, Africa could see 1.2 billion infections and 3.3 million deaths under the worst-case scenario. Modelling by the Imperial College London completed the picture with 300,000 deaths under the best-case scenario.

Well, it’s been over 8 months since the virus was discovered and over six months since it first landed in Africa, via Egypt on February 14, 2020 and followed by the second case in Algeria on February 25. Nigeria recorded its first case two days later. As in Algeria, the patient was an Italian, returning to the country from Italy, where infections were already growing. Although the global outlook is scary at over 27 million cases as of September 7, 2020, only just over one million of them have occurred in Africa, instead of the predicted 10 million.

Whatever happened to the predictions? We should not be cavalier in answering this question. Rather, a two-prong approach is needed in order to have an balanced answer.

First, what factors led to the dire predictions? There are three major ones. One, there are far too many crowded spaces all over Africa, which could accelerate the rate of infection. Cities, towns, and villages promote crowds because of inadequate housing, poverty, and the pressure of communal culture. Besides, Africans by and large are communal, rather than individualistic, people. They congregate in small spaces in the cities, towns, villages, and even at home.

In Nigeria’s depressed communities, for example, many low-income workers congregate in Face-Me-I-Face-You type of accommodation, where single rooms facing each other house different families, each of which may contain as many as six or more occupants. There could be up to ten such rooms, five on either side of a shared narrow hallway. Occupants share a common kitchen and one or two bathrooms behind the house.

Beyond living spaces, shopping malls, local markets, neighbourhood stores, motor parks, and other crowd-pooling spaces are also potential  super-spreading sites for the coronavirus disease.

Two, the health infrastructure in Africa is generally weak in several ways. The few good hospitals are inaccessible to the public, while the so-called General Hospitals and Primary Health Care Centres lack necessary equipment, health workers, necessary staff, and medical supplies. The WHO, which monitors global health systems, was rightly concerned that Africa’s health infrastructure might be unable to handle a pandemic as ravaging as COVID-19. But the continents with stronger health infrastructure have succumbed to the virus at much higher rates than Africa.

Factor number three is the combination of poor leadership, weak institutions, and rampant governance failure across the continent. It was feared that many African leaders may not be able to rise to the COVID-19 challenge and that those who could muster the political will might be hampered by weak institutions, corruption, and poor implementation.

It must be emphasised, however, that the dire predictions of high infection rate on the continent was somehow hedged. Michel Yao, Head of Emergency Operations for WHO Africa, indicated that the high figures predicted for Africa resulted from a provisional modelling. Therefore, the resulting projection could change, if the people changed their behaviour in  time. That was the case during the Ebola outbreak, leading to a crash of worst-case scenarios.

This leads to the second perspective on the predictions. Why have they not come true so far?

One popular explanation is the role of cross-protective immunity based on the exposure of Africans to a variety of infections to which they have developed some immunity. However, in the absence of any scientific study, cross-protective immunity lacks explanatory power as protection against COVID-19. From what we know so far,, this virus respects only a scientific approach rather than mere speculation.

Another explanation is based on Africa’s demography. It is argued that Africa’s large young population, that is, people aged below 25, who constitute about 60 percent of the total population, has prevented the explosion of infections. Besides, it is also true that fewer Africans enter the old age bracket of eighty-something years, which has been proven to succumb readily to the virus. Africa’s average life expectancy of about 62 years is lower by 10-20 years than in other continents. Healthy life expectancy is even shorter as over 10 percent of living years in Africa is spent in poor health.

Viewed from this perspective, demography is actually a double bag for Africa. On the one hand, the predicted youth advantage for the continent has yet to be fully tested as much of the continent has been on lockdown or one type of restriction or the other. Let’s see what happens when schools and universities reopen in the last quarter of this year. The ongoing experiences in Europe and North America already show that youths not only get infected, they stage or attend super-spreading events. The greatest fear is that they may go back home to infect the elderly.

On the other hand, Africa has held its head up with its weak health infrastructure and crowded spaces. Although more deaths are recorded among the elderly, the younger population manifests the highest rate of infection on the continent. This may get worse when schools reopen fully and all restrictions are removed.

In the meantime, credit should be given to African leaders at federal and state levels for quickly enforcing lockdowns and enforcing relative compliance with risk-mitigation measures in the urban areas. Surely, these measures have kept infections down. It is also important to continue to shield rural farming communities from the virus, by keeping city dwellers away in the meantime.

True, we have learned a lot about COVID-19, but so much still remains unknown. The dire predictions must be kept in the bag, rather than completely discarded, until a safe and effective vaccine is available.