GOVERNOR Abdulaziz Yari’s response to the outbreak of cerebrospinal meningitis (CSM) in Zamfara State has grated badly on the nerves of many Nigerians. Far worse is his Freudian slip that signposts the leadership dilemma and difficulties with which Nigeria grapples. Zamfara, with a casualty figure in excess of 200 out of a national total of about 336 so far, appears to be the epicentre of the epidemic. In his response to the CSM outbreak, the Zamfara governor was not reported to have summoned an emergency meeting or a task force to check its menacing march, nor did he demonstrate the franticness agitated leaders show when they are confronted by a new and frightening problem. Instead, he seemed convinced that the CSM outbreak was a reflection of the country’s spiritual health. This piquant reasoning in place of a hard-nosed approach might explain why Zamfara has accounted for about two-thirds of the casualty figures in the latest CSM crisis.
Responding to a question by a BBC Hausa service reporter on the CSM crisis, the governor gave his own analysis of the problem by suggesting that the sins of the people might be the cause of the problem. Said he: “The World Health Organisation has carried out vaccinations against the Type A virus not just in Zamfara, but many other states. However, because people refused to stop their nefarious activities, God now decided to send the Type C virus, which has no vaccination. People have turned away from God and he has promised that ‘if you do anyhow, you see anyhow’; that is just the cause of this outbreak as far as I am concerned. There is no way fornication will be so rampant and God will not send a disease that cannot be cured. The most important thing is for our people to know that their relationship with God is not smooth. All they need to do is repent and everything will be alright.”
Appalled by Gov Yari’s response, commentators, among whom was the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, furiously excoriated him and dismissed him as ineffectual in the face of a modern health emergency. Stung by the overwhelming abuse he has received so far on his linkage of the epidemic to the people’s spiritual health, the governor quickly authorised a rebuttal through his Special Adviser on Media and Public Enlightenment, Ibrahim Magaji Dosara. Mercifully, the rebuttal did not suggest that the misunderstanding was due to interpretational difficulties, considering that the interview was given in Hausa language. Instead, the spokesman suggested that the governor’s remarks on the CSM outbreak was mischievously twisted and quoted out of context.
Said Mr Dosara: “The Governor noted that the situation was unfortunate because the state does not have enough vaccines yet for the Type C Meningitis. The governor thereafter enjoined all Nigerians to embrace prayers, as God who is aware of the outbreak of the ailment surely has antidote for it. The Governor specially appealed to Nigerians to make deliberate effort to be closer to God by shunning sins of fornication and other forms of disobedience so as to receive his divine health and other blessings, as he is closer to those who obey him and distant themselves from sins.”
He continued: “No doubt, as a God-fearing man, and a Muslim, the governor believes in the powers of Allah to inflict whatever punishment He decides on the human race. However, the governor who spoke in Hausa had a particular audience in mind when he spoke to the BBC Hausa reporter. The governor added, for example, that fornication should not spread so much in society that it becomes common place, and if that happens, Allah promises to inflict, on its perpetrators (people) a sickness that would have no cure. Let it be known too that the governor still insists that all diseases come from Allah and that at no point in his interaction with the reporters did he insinuate that Allah was punishing Nigerians but instead drew from the teachings of great Islamic traditions to buttress the point he was trying to convey.”
Mr Dosara should not have bothered, for his rebuttal was in fact no rebuttal at all. The governor was fairly copiously and eminently quoted on the subject. There was apparently no interpretational error, for even the governor himself did not suggest that language accounted for what he thought was a misunderstanding. After a lengthy and prefatory rigmarole, the rebuttal itself ended up by reiterating that there was a distinct connection between a nation’s spiritual health and their physical health. Given the magnitude of the health challenge Zamfara faced over the CSM outbreak, particularly its undiscriminating attack, the governor had no reason to speak of the connection between sin and health. He chose to do that, and must bear the reprimand of the public bravely. What the public wanted to hear him say, even if he would pass the buck, was to give the background to the health crisis, indicate what steps his government had taken to combat it, and suggest why those steps had seemed inadequate and what amelioration the government in Abuja could offer. Indeed, he began his response by giving the public a background to the latest CSM outbreak, but immediately derailed.
Two things emerge from Gov Yari’s initial response and the correction he authorised. First is the obvious fact that the governor actually and disturbingly forgets that he is not presiding over a theocracy that adduces open spiritual interpretations to physical phenomena. He is presiding over a secular state where his religious persuasion is of little significance in the face of serious challenges, such as the current health crisis. This persuasion, as the Emir of Kano suggested while responding to Gov Yari’s shocking hypothesis, can be a restraining factor in marshalling rapid and adequate response to a crisis that needed a totally different kind of approach, a response the state is nevertheless equipped to handle. Furthermore, how would this religiously minded governor determine what point of sinless existence the state must get to in order to attract a clean bill of health? He spoke principally of fornication as the cause of the CSM outbreak. Why not financial malfeasance, shedding innocent blood, oppression by the executive, bad and unfair laws by the legislature, perversion of judgement by the judiciary, etc.?
Second, Gov Yari’s heartfelt response to the BBC question represents in some ways the enduring lack of profundity manifested by many Nigerian governments at the state and national levels in the face of critical challenges. Most Nigerian leaders are poorly equipped for leadership and cannot respond quickly and competently to serious challenges. They are more obsessed with the benefits that come with power than the responsibilities that undergird it. Even if the state and the country were not prepared for the Type C strain of CSM, when they had been used to Type A, why must the Zamfara governor and the Nigerian government assume fatalistically that an annual outbreak of the familiar strain was inevitable? Are there not other predisposing factors they can battle to mitigate? Can a better urban and regional planning paradigm not obviate the predictable outbreak or consign the disease to medical history?
Both Governor Yari and his spokesman, Mr Dosara, are wrong to assume that anyone had reason to twist the governor’s remarks out of context. Zamfara may be important as a component of Nigeria, but it is a rustic state, far too remote from the commentariat belt to elicit deliberate attacks of the kind they seem to imply. The governor goofed. Rather than blame phantom detractors and accuse them of trying to tarnish his ‘rising reputation’, he should use the harsh and vivid mirror held to his face by critics to retool himself and his leadership style and content. If he is overwhelmed by a health crisis that announces itself religiously (no pun intended) every year, which has apparently induced a complacent response, and he cannot also find the ingenuity and innovativeness to tackle it, how can he be trusted to face and solve the bigger and more visionary challenges needed to uplift the standards of his state, prepare his people for the future, and leave Zamfara far better than he met it?
Governor Yari, like most other governors, needs a radically new paradigm of leadership. The CSM outbreak shows why and how urgently he needs a new and intelligent administrative focus. He needs a team of thinkers and builders to help him conceive a great paradigm for the Zamfara project. He should seek out these experts wherever they can be found rather than ensconce himself in the bucolic philosophy and distorted theocracy that explain nothing and proffers no solution.
