By Tony Marinho
When is Nigeria going to help fulfil the Social Development Goals (SDGs) and follow many African countries and New York State in banning ‘Single Use Plastic Bags’ to stop the growth of mountains of rubbish and reduce rubbish in the hundreds of millions of gutters around the country?
Luxembourg, population 600,000+ offers free rail and bus transport. Revolutionary? Yes and No. It is certainly a statement about what a government should be doing with the citizens’ taxes instead of paying the political class among the highest earnings in the world. I challenge you to Google or Bing ‘Parliament earnings worldwide!
In the UK, there is free transport for over 65s on public transport. Here in Nigeria, you cannot get through a police/FRSC/VIO/Customs checkpoint without an overt or implied financial challenge -and this in the middle of a self-professed anti-corruption government. Does EFCC not see the activities of the ‘uniforms’ on the road???
Nigerian authorities have deliberately underfunded public transport, mostly refusing to provide real mass transit for its people preferring our roads to be clogged by 100,000 Okada one seater or 3-4 Keke vehicles than 2,000 buses 60-80-seater for real mass transit.
The Coronavirus COVID-19 with deaths 3,000+, infections 90,000+ and growing. COVID19 will cause $100billion of losses in worldwide stock market, commercial, business and soon to follow the inevitable millions in job losses associated with cancelled services from parties to travel for tourists and business, cancelled events in business, entertainment, sport and by cut-throat companies shedding jobs –‘No Work Available -No Pay!!
Nigeria will suffer budgetary income losses and income damage and lose from reduction in demands for its oil in line with the worldwide fall in demand for oil for industry and transport which will cut the price of a barrel to well below $50 compounded by low demands of summer. Nigeria will lose a lot in delays and falling loan funding for infrastructure because most of its infrastructure contracts are in the ‘Chinese basket’ of ‘’loan and own on default’’. These loans, across Africa, are dependent on ‘Chinese Happiness’ loans which may be cut by ‘force majeure’, even though China holds trillions in US Dollars. Delays in Chinese contract execution will reflect badly on the governments across Africa who depend on the Chinese participation to meet their SDGs and political infrastructure goals.
Critics claim that the Chinese do little local recruiting in their contracts preferring Chinese labour, and even criminal Chinese labour. If so, the execution of the contracts will stall badly as immigration officials must sit up or risk importing coronavirus massively. The reputation of the Chinese is also adversely affected on social media by fake or true videos demonstrating strange feeding habits and methods of making food items for distribution to Africa.
The world is now a ‘Global Viral Village’, no longer just a Global Village’, but with the dangerous opportunity for lethal and debilitating viruses spread by accident, ignorance, deliberate treachery or a dot in an undeclaration of war. The spread could also soon be fuelled by poor hygiene, poor sanitation in many countries -a failure of governance. China, like India and others, embraced the concept of the ‘Global Village’ to lure foreign boardrooms and businesses to relocate services and production with cheap labour and expertise. This often put the home countries’ workers, more expensive with pensions or even under-skilled, out of work. What China and India developed also made other countries weak. Independent in 1960, Nigeria still struggles to allow its competent engineers to even build a good road, flyover bridge or railway in 2020 without road digging foreigners who may or may not be importing any one of a vast variety of viruses, as yet unnamed or undiscovered.
Interestingly, the only place Nigeria does not allow foreigners is in its politics. I leave you to judge the success of that enterprise – a purely local high consumption, destructive and largely unproductive machine suffering from its own viruses. That fact itself should answer the question of our competence or lack of it.
In answer to the very real presence of coronavirus, social media is also awash with very important ’WASH’ preventive advice. WASH= Water, Sanitise and ‘Avoid Handshakes/Hugs/Head-touching/Hisses/Kisses. Do not wait for Coronavirus to enter via your street. Reintroduce the simple, non-panic, standard hygiene measures used to contain Ebola and which also reduced typhoid infections for a time as well. Even though all governments have destroyed tap water sources. It is of course difficult to wash hands in a country which unfortunately has, by policy or no policy, managed to ‘reverse the flow of water’ with removal of or non-running taps from homes and streets resulting in nonfunctioning toilets nationwide and a 75% open defecation rate with declining potable water in hospitals, schools and neighbourhoods over the years.
You, the reader, literate and responsible, must express commitment by practicing and rehearsing ‘Coronavirus Preventive Measures Today’, to prevent infection tomorrow. Today, call ‘Coronavirus Prevention Response’ meeting in your family, workplace, community and country and at gatherings for friendship, worship, scholarship and ‘work-ship’. Anyway, is it not good to wash your hands to prevent vomiting, diarrhea, typhoid, gastroenteritis? Make an effort to keep your hands to yourself and even away from your face. Do not cough into other people’s faces. Drink enough fluid to make the colour of your urine colourless or lightly yellow.
NB: WASH= WAter, Sanitise and ‘Avoid Handshakes/Hugs/Head-touching/Hisses/Kisses’. Change Your Life=Save A Life!