Since February 27, 2020, when the first index case of COVID-19 was reported in Nigeria, and that satanic, virulent virus overwhelmed our lives, Nigeria has had cause to deal with other convergent afflictions: the first in my view, is the pandemic of irresponsible governance as evidenced by the kind of poor leadership responses that we have witnessed in some states of the Federation, and the growing narrative that some key players may have turned the main pandemic itself into a racket; the second is the pandemic of insecurity – even with states and borders on lockdown, bandits, criminals and terrorists – whichever label suits your fancy- have been running riot across the country particularly in the North East/West where villages are sacked in one day, for hours on end, Southern Kaduna where villages have been razed and murder has been committed on a large scale, and elsewhere in the country where members of the middle class are now afraid of their own shadows. The third is the poverty pandemic: lockdowns, shutdowns and the obvious possum-ization of all processes has resulted in the loss of income, the suspension of jobs or their outright loss, a sharp rise of course in unemployment figures and the abbreviation of hope in the face of inflation and economic contractions. The fourth is the pandemic of rape. 

I have no immediate data to suggest that the menace of “sex without consent” and the associated ills of domestic and sexual violence have any causal relationship with COVID-19, but what has been seen so far is that in the season of COVID-19, there has been an exponential rise in the reported cases of rape and sexual violence. One newspaper has had cause to report for example that in one month, there were ten high profile cases of rape across the country. In Kaduna, in April, an 18-year-old young girl known as Jennifer was attacked and raped by five men. The victim’s family released a video of her ordeal.  In  Lagos, a young lady, Tina Ezekwe, just 16, was shot and killed at a bus stop in Lagos by a trigger-happy policeman. This was rape of another kind, but a popular variety in Nigeria pointing to the failure of the state and its agents to place a high premium on human lives. A few days later, in Edo State, a 22-year old university student Vera Uwaila Omozuwa, simply known as Uwa was beaten to death in a church after she had been allegedly raped. Her assailants smashed her head with a fire extinguisher. 

In Dutse, Jigawa, there was the report of a 12-year old girl, named Farishina who was raped repeatedly on different occasions by 11 men. In Ibadan, on June 2, a 19-year old student Barakat Bello was also raped inside her father’s house and murdered. There have been even more horrific reports: of men sleeping with a two-year-old, of men sleeping with their daughters, and the only excuse one imbecilic offender could offer was that if his wife denied him sex, he would seek sexual pleasures from his own daughters. In Lagos, four masked men raped a 12-year-old girl. In Niger State a 25-year-old man raped an 85-year old grandma! A university undergraduate in Lagos was also accused of kissing a child  passionately. He has since been arrested.  In Benue, a 38-year-old man raped his seven-month-old daughter! Nigeria’s social media space understandably, has been inundated with hashtags of protest, anguish and change: #JusticeforUwa, #JusticeforTina, #JusticeforJennifer; #JusticeforFarishina, #JusticeforBarakat; #Wearetired; #NotoRape; #StopRapeNow…#EndRapeNow..     

The exponential explosion in reported cases of rape in the time of COVID-19 may be responsible for the outrage that we have seen, but the truth is that the essential difference is the focused media attention that the subject now receives. Rape is an epidemic that has now reached pandemic proportions due to inaction, stigmatization, limitations of existing law and the the failure of the state to respond to what is clearly a major humanitarian crisis. In 2017, the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics reported, and you must take this as merely an estimate given the challenges of data collection in Nigeria, that there were 2, 279 reported cases of indecent assault and 1, 164 cases of anal sex, at the time from 35 states, In July 2019, a poll by NOI reported that one in every three girls in Nigeria would have experienced one form of sexual assault before the age of 25. That means virtually every Nigerian woman has at least a story of sexual harassment or molestation to tell. In 2020, there has been an unprecedented explosion. Is COVID-19 a special type of beast that implants a new variant of madness in people’s heads, which is directly linked to their libido?  

Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State under whose watch rape has been fully criminalized, deserves commendation.  He has just signed into law, a piece of legislation from the State House of Assembly, titled “Compulsory Treatment and Care of Child Victims of Sexual Abuse Law 2020.” There have been objections to the new Ekiti State Law on the grounds that it says no sexual offender will be entitled to bail. Expressly, this would be a violation of Sections 35(1), 36(5) of the Nigerian Constitution, and to that extent questionable, but let it be known that the right of bail is contractual in nature, per Tobi, JSC. 

Elsewhere, I have spoken about the principled position that has been taken by Governor Fayemi and the Ekiti State House of Assembly. They are both convinced that there should be zero tolerance for sexual violence for all forms of sexual violence. Nobody should argue with that. Governor Fayemi also says there should be a national consensus on the issue of rape in Nigeria. His wife, the delectable Erelu Bisi Fayemi turns 57 this week and has been a victim of sexual molestation by her own account. I do not not think this is why Fayemi is gung-ho on the question of rape and sexual violence, we should look more at the principle behind his protestation. Before him, it is only in Lagos State that we have had a similar passion expressed about sexual violence, with the establishment under then Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola of a sexual violence agency. In Ekiti, Fayemi has moved further by instituting a more active naming and shaming system by activating a Sexual Offenders Register, and taking that register to the Social Media. It is a brilliant initiative even if we must not overlook the fact that the register has not yet named and shamed a power-figure – power figures, the NGOs insist are the worst perpetrators of rape. Power, class, culture and privilege being the strongest enabling factors of rape. But the issue is: can we ever have a national consensus on rape in Nigeria? Opinion is divided on that and that is the real problem. 

Nigeria’s attitude to the issue of rape and domestic violence has been at best unprogressive and far behind contemporary legal thinking. The failure to move forward and align with current trends on this subject is one of the sore aspects of our jurisprudence. With regard to rape, the relevant body of laws include the Criminal Code, Sections 215, 218, 221, 357 - 361 thereof, the Penal Code, Section 282 thereof, Section 1 of the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act, 2015 (VAPPA), and the Child Rights Act (2003), all reasonable and valid in expression and effect under Chapter Four of the Nigerian Constitution.  Ancillary provisions within the statute books also do not in any way justify the abuse of human rights often indicated by the obtainment of carnal knowledge by force. But there are known gaps in the law that have not been addressed. Without being pedantic, it is worth noting that concerns have been expressed about the definition of “rape” itself under Nigerian law. Section 357 defines rape as a man having forceful carnal knowledge of a woman. In today’s reality, it is not only men who rape women. Women rape women. Men rape women. Men rape Men. The law needs to be changed. 

In the extant law, a married man cannot rape his wife. This does not arise from a construction of the doctrine of the unity of spouse: that is a man and his wife being one and the same but the thinking that a married woman is a property of her husband, to be used as deemed fit. There are decided cases that have freed women from this primordial and antiquated misconception but this is one curious area in which the law has not yet penetrated the proverbial “other room” where even wives of Presidents, and accomplished women, suffer in silence.  There is also the problem of child brides. Nigeria operates a conflict of laws, or perhaps a dual legal system with the rights of children. The definition of a child for example in the Child Rights Act (2003) is different from that of the Children and Young Persons Law, in the same manner in which the Criminal Code Provisions on Rape are at variance with the same provisions in the Penal Code that are applicable to the Northern States of Nigeria. The existence of a dual legal system is at the heart of Nigeria’s under-development process. It accounts mostly for the failure to forge a consensus on anything in the country. 

Take the Child Rights Act. Whereas it has been ratified as required by virtually every State in the South of Nigeria, 11 states, mainly Northern States, have refused to ratify it. They claim that it violates the Shariah law which allows child marriages.  UNICEF reports that Nigeria accounts for one of the highest rates of child brides in the world. The figure is put at 23 million child brides, most likely to double by 2050. Nigeria also accounts for one of the highest rates of Vesico-Vaginal-Festula (VVF), arising due to early exposure of child brides to coitus, with the added complications of high infant mortality, maternal morbidity/maternal mortality rates, out-of-school syndrome, poverty…and yet the defenders of culture, tradition and religion in parts of the North insist that any attempt to change the regime amounts to a violation of their rights. The rule is that a child below a certain age is not in a position to grant consent. The definition of a child in Nigeria is confused and confusing. 

This is perhaps why since 2008, every attempt to review the extant laws on rape has been unsuccessful. There have been repeated talks about the need to review the punishment for rape, the definition of it, the burden of proof, the fielding of evidence and the time within which reasonable action can be taken. But every Bill addressing the matter since 2008 simply ends in the drawers. As recently as 2019, a bill to amend the Criminal Code on Rape made it to second reading and vanished into thin air. A few weeks ago, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege and others started talking again about the need to amend the laws to discourage rape. There is no guarantee that the latest effort will not end up as another effort at grandstanding and populism. Rape, like Federalism/Restructuring, is one of the most discussed problems in Nigeria. Every stakeholder knows what the matter is but nobody is willing to do anything about it, or courageous enough to go the extra mile. Nigeria is a country of smart talkers without either ambition or will. 

The other issue with regard to rape is the evil of stigmatization. In traditional societies, rape was a taboo, a Karmic affliction, a curse.  Victims and their families could not talk about it. Families were afraid that nobody would marry their daughters who may have been defiled and in those traditional communities, the biggest achievement of a female child was to marry well and be a good wife. The times have changed, but primordial frames of mind have remained resilient. The culture of silence is the biggest threat to the now emerging #MeToo movement in Nigeria and Africa, reinforced by the fear of stigma. The final sticky problem here is that nobody talks about when a man rapes a man, or a woman rapes a man or a woman, and the fact that many of those shouting #MeToo, may just well be making false accusations.  

While Nigerians are busy with the management of COVID-19 and its many fall-outs, fire has been burning in other aspects of national life which require equal attention both now and after COVID-19 – the increasing spate of insecurity in the country is one, the crisis in the country’s electricity sector is another, but COVID-19 is such an all-consuming pre-occupation that other issues have been pushed to the back-burner. More people have died in Nigeria from attacks on communities by terrorists nicely referred to as bandits since January raising a question about the country’s capacity to win the war against terror and insecurity, and there have been crises on other fronts that we would still need to deal with, which may have far-reaching implications for national economic sustainability. The politics of the electricity sector is one of such issues.  

Long before COVID-19, for example, there have been problems with Nigeria’s privatization of the power sector and the performance of the entire value chain from generation to transmission and distribution. The problem perhaps can be traced back to 2013 when the Federal Government of Nigeria decided to complete the privatization of the electricity sector. The then PHCN was unbundled into three parts: Generating Companies (Gencos), the Transmission Company of Nigeria, and Distribution Companies (Discos). The ancient Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), even after its commercialization did not meet the objective of achieving efficiency and effectiveness in delivering power to accelerate Nigeria’s economic development process. The underlying philosophy as I understand it, is that partnership with the private sector will address that omission and re-position Nigeria’s electricity value-chain. The Nigerian Government sold a 60% stake in the distribution end of the value chain, and retained ownership of 40% therein, but it kept 100% control over the transmission of electricity. The Gencos had different controlling share ratios. Manitoba of Canada was engaged to manage the Transmission Company of Nigeria. Private investors took over the management of the Gencos and Discos. 

The reform of the electricity sector is one of the major last acts of the Goodluck Jonathan administration. Many institutions of state were involved in the process, notably the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), the National Electricity Regulatory Commission, that is the regulator, and the Bulk Electricity Company, the middle broker known as the Bulk Trader. Privatization is not an automated transaction. It is a process, with its own twists and turns and indeed, there were in-built mechanisms in the power sector reform process and the Electricity Power Sector Reform Act (EPSRA) Act to ensure reviews, standards and the fine-tuning of the process. But the entire process had hardly assumed a definite form, the private investors had not yet settled down, when Nigeria faced one of its most momentous transitions in contemporary history. The Jonathan administration left in May 2015. It was replaced by a new administration led by President Muhammadu Buhari.  This lent a new tone to everything else: the new administration had a choice to continue with the programmes of its predecessor or to adopt some of them and review/reject/cancel others. This was exactly what happened. And it happened that the power sector reform process was one of those areas that the new Federal Government felt a review was necessary. 

This is understandable perhaps. Successive Nigerian administrations since the return to civilian rule in 1999, have without exception acknowledged the fact that an efficient power sector would help to accelerate Nigeria’s development process, and even the quality of livelihood. In an economy dominated mostly by the informal sector and Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs), an efficient power supply system should facilitate productivity and release the people’s energies for maximum beneficial outputs, with corresponding implication for output growth. The bigger questions, however, have been: how to keep politics out of it?, How to get it right? And how best to act in the national interest and not narrow, partisan interests? Those were the questions at issue when the Umaru Yar’Adua administration succeeded Obasanjo’s administration in 2007 and billions worth of imported equipment were allowed to rot away at the ports. The same questions emerged as soon as the Buhari administration assumed office. 

Without missing a beat, the Buhari administration took a fine toothcomb to the privatization of the electricity sector and began to engage the private investors in the power generating and distribution ends of the value chain. In the course of the 2014/2015 Presidential campaigns, key spokespersons of the opposition All Progressives Congress had accused the Jonathan administration of fumbling with the power sector. They even argued that the efficient delivery of electricity to the people is not rocket science. Thus, upon assumption of power a point needed to be proved, but in attacking former players in the corridor, the new administration overlooked a number of issues and soon ran into fresh, troubled waters. In order to save face, it has spent the best part of the past five years looking for scapegoats and trading blames. The matter has now reached a point that the DISCOs have now gone to court to seek a restraining order against a planned forensic audit by the Federal Government. I have written twice on this subject in recent times. The first time I did so in this column, I was accused of cruelty by the Discos simply because I argued that an upward review of electricity tariffs would be insensitive to the plight of Nigerian consumers of electricity. My follow-up comment on the subject drew sharp reactions from official quarters and all I did was to state that the private investors have something useful to say that should be addressed. In this commentary, I simply wish to draw attention to some often overlooked cross-current issues, and ask that common sense should prevail. Litigation could serve the purpose of taking the egos of the various players on a Disney-mode trip, but it can only make things worse in the long run. The main victims would be the ordinary people of Nigeria. Only a week ago, 10 of Nigeria’s generating plants all became idle at the same time: Geregu II, Omotosho II, Ibom plants, Sapele II, Alaoji, Olorunsogo II, Ihovbor, Gbarain, AES and ASCO. The effect was that power generation fell to 2, 626 MW – a complete embarrassment in a country of 200 million that should never at any time generate anything below 40, 000 MW. Even at the best of times, the entire country’s installed generating capacity is about 12, 910 MW, but the peak that has been generated in the last five years is about 5, 375 MW. TCN lacks the capacity to evacuate and deliver the same amount of energy to the Discos. The national grid has degenerated. It is perpetually down. Transmission infrastructure is extremely poor. What are the issues? 

The Federal Government budget for power is usually through the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC), TCN and the Rural Electrification Agency. The Federal Government through the Central Bank has also made provisions to enable the Gencos pay the gas supplier and meet other statutory obligations. But the industry often complains about government, and how regulation has resulted in a shortfall. On its part, government accuses Discos in return, of being congenital debtors whose failure to make due remittances to the Bulk Trader has derailed the electricity sector. The deficit in that sector today is over N2 trillion. Government blames the private investors, they in turn blame government. The investors’ argument is that the authorities have refused to allow cost-reflective tariffs, which is provided for in the Multi-Year Tariff Order (MYTO) in the enabling Act. They point out that government has stubbornly, contrary to the Act, pegged tariffs. Who will pay for the difference? 

Now, it should be noted that the expectation of the Nigerian Government is that the privatization of the power sector will work out like the privatization of the telecommunication sector, but the electricity investors argue that this is like comparing apples and oranges. “In the electricity sector, the value chain is not 2 plus 2 = 4”, they say. In other words, it is not the same as telephone. Nobody can distribute electricity without bringing wire and electric poles to your doorstep. Telcos use a different kind of technology. My view: this may not be a very useful comparison except we want to open up an unproductive argument between Discos and Telcos who certainly have many tales of woe of their own to tell. 

The non-availability of gas has also been a major issue in the electricity sector chain. Thermal plants do not get enough gas due to one excuse or the other. The Discos are not responsible for the supply of gas. The Nigeria Gas Company (NGC) which is fully owned by the NNPC is responsible for that. But the NGC is not part of the privatization process. It is bogged down by bureaucracy and the inefficiency of the NNPC. Why is the NGC not privatized? Meanwhile, government is still talking about building a gas pipeline to Ajaokuta, Abuja, Kaduna and Kano? How will that impact on electricity transmission? Why the gas pipeline? Where are the foreseeable gains? Hydro power generation is cheaper but the Mambilla Hydro project has remained a perpetual work in progress while much energy is devoted to the pursuit of shadows. 

The Federal Government complains about the Discos but the point is often overlooked that there are still 10 power plants that are fully owned by the Federal Government. Why are those plants not working? The Federal Government has been challenging private investors who borrowed money to invest in the electricity sector but it is not worried about the fact that existing assets in its own possession are wasting away. 

The crisis in the electricity sector has been considered and re-examined at all levels, not just by the NERC, the regulator, but also by the National Economic Council (NEC), and of late, there have been some developments. The first is the emerging prominence of Siemens of Germany in the conversation. Siemens is not new but its records in Nigeria are mixed. It has a track-record of achievement in the electricity sector particularly its intervention in Egypt where it helped to add value. The plan is that by 2021, Siemens would have helped to ramp up Nigeria’s electricity service delivery. A key point however: foreign contractors should not be promoted as a threat to local investors in the electricity sector. Is it possible to restrict Siemens to the transmission sector and the reinvention of infrastructure? The MoU that has been signed with Siemens is presented to local players as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. That is unwise. 

The Federal Government through the National Economic Council and the Presidency as it were has now ordered a forensic audit of the power companies who seem to be uncomfortable with that. I guess they do not trust government and can you blame them?  But why the emphasis on forensic audit? Ordinarily, this should not be a matter for litigation. The Federal Government also wants state governments to be part of the shareholding in the power sector. I have no problems with that. Government already has equity. It can share that as it wishes, but nothing more than that.  

What the Federal Government must watch closely and be careful about is the repeated threat that it intends to either review the privatization of the electricity sector or cancel it altogether, whatever that double-talk means. The Senate President Ahmad Lawan seems to support the latter option, whereas he was a member of the Senate Committee on Privatization, 2011- 2015. What could be his motive? Government options should not be about individual interests. There are larger implications about investor confidence, cost of likely litigation, the sanctity of contracts, service delivery and governance. The current situation is un-bankable on all fronts. I recommend dialogue, not the looming showdown. Nigerians want regular electricity supply, affordable tariffs and a country that works. Is it possible to focus on that? 

This year’s eid-al-fitr, the Muslim festival marking the end of the month of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast for 29 or 30 days, in observance of one of the Five Pillars of Islam, was celebrated on Saturday and Sunday May 23/24, but it was a different kind of eid. It was sombre, low key, and completely over-shadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In close to 100 years, there has been no eid like that: the world’s nearly 2 billion Muslims observed the Ramadan under imposed conditions. People were advised to avoid congregational prayers and stay in their homes. On Sunday, many could not observe the traditions of the eid either: the sharing of gifts, visits to family and friends to share goodwill, hugs and handshakes. In countries around the world, persons were advised to shun large gatherings for their own safety. Eid prayers could not be held publicly in Mecca and Medina. The Grand Mosque was noticeably scanty. Earlier, the Saudi Grand Mufti had advised against large congregations. 

In Egypt, the usually busy Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo was empty. In the United Kingdom, the Muslim Council, ahead of the Eid-al-Fitri, advised Muslims to pray at home.  In Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand and Malaysia, congregational prayers were allowed but there was very strict adherence to precautions. In Thailand for example, worshippers who showed up for the Hari Raya, as the eid-al-fitri is otherwise known in that country, Malaysia and in Indonesia had to pass through health officials who checked their temperatures, gave them sanitizing gels, recorded their names and addresses so they can be traced and contacted in the event of a report of community spread of the virus. The people prayed but they kept away from one another. The main thing about COVID-19 is how it has imposed a regimen of observances on human behavior and relationships. 

The fact that people are expected to comply or gamble with their lives for failing to do so, is what makes it all so surreal.  The mode of compliance varied from one country to the other. The only uniting factor, however, is how on Sunday, the Muslim global community and indeed the entire world was reminded of how so much COVID-19 has disrupted our lives. This sub-text was driven home more poignantly when the New York Times on May 24, decided on a dramatic, all-type concept front page, listing the names and brief descriptions of about 1,000 Americans who had died from COVID-19 related complications. It was the first time in more than 40 years that the New York Times will not have an image on its front page. The published names were compiled from obituary notices in newspapers across the United States by a researcher - Alan Delaqueriere - and put together by a team led by Ms. Simone Landon, Assistant Editor, Graphics.  There was also an inside-page essay by columnist, Dan Barry. For me, this was journalism at another level. 

The New York Times went beyond the raw data that is quoted daily by Johns Hopkins University which tracks the incidence of COVID-19 in the United States (over 1.6 million confirmed cases, and over 98, 000 deaths – the highest COVID-19 figures in the world!). The newspaper gave names to the statistics and conveyed a sense of the uniqueness of those that died. Whoever reads that list is bound to realize how it is so easy to be alive at one moment, only to end up on a list of corpses in a short moment. The unpredictability of human transitions is what therefore makes it alarming that certain persons knowing how the grim reaper is on rampage, riding the vehicle of a virus, would engage in suicidal and risky behavior. 

These were my thoughts as I read the New York Times on the day of the eid-al-fitri, and reflected on the sharp variations in how theeid was celebrated especially in sub-Saharan Africa where religion is a virus of sorts. Whereas North African countries (Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Algeria) where there are high figures of COVID-19 enforced rules of physical distancing, many worshippers South of the Sahara threw caution to the winds, with perhaps the notable exceptions of Ghana and Senegal. In Sudan, before and after the eid, neither the leaders nor the people seemed to have heard of physical distancing. Sudan has the highest number of cases in East Africa with over 100 deaths but nobody seems to care. The people and their leaders certainly did not care during this year’s eid-al-fitri. Inflation is over 100% in Sudan. Health workers have no access to Personal Protective Equipment. The World Health Organization (WHO) should watch that country closely.

In Tanzania, a country that has been “Magufulifized” to paraphrase the eminent Kenyan Professor, PLO Lumumba, the leaders pretended to be aware of the need for physical distancing but the worshippers who trooped to mosques in Dodoma and elsewhere in the country could not be bothered. As in Sudan, the mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic could be traced to the failure of leadership. President John Magufuli of Tanzania held much promise when he assumed office five years ago, but he has since derailed confirming indeed that his reform agenda is a double-edged sword of progressivism and dictatorship/primitivism. He insists that there has been a reduction in the number of COVID-19 cases in Tanzania, but this is not based on data. Tanzania stopped releasing COVID-19 figures and suspended daily briefings on April 21 because Magufuli is convinced that such briefings cause panic among the populace. He also insists that testing cannot be trusted, having discovered that even fruits and goats have tested positive due to faulty test kits. The Africa Centre for Disease Control and the US Embassy in the country have warned about the extremely high risk that Tanzania constitutes, especially to the neighbouring countries of Kenya, Zambia and Uganda. Healthcare workers in Tanzania cannot even express an opinion because under Magufuli, it is a crime to have independent thoughts. On eid-el-fitri day, Muslims in Tanzania simply followed his lead and ignored the reality of COVID-19. 

In not too far away Burundi, the management of COVID-19 is not any better. Burundi is officially a secular state. Muslims constitute a minority, previously thought to be only 1% of the population but now considered to be about 5-8% after the last post-civil war census. The big problem with Burundi in the face of COVID-19 is the total refusal of President Pierre Nkurunziza to come to terms with the fact that the pandemic is real. Last week, the country held a Presidential election, a stage-managed election which was rigged to produce the candidate of the ruling party, the CNDD-FDD as winner with 68.72%. The CNDD-FDD’s candidate, Evariste Ndayishimiye was once Chief of Staff to Nkurunziza who wants to retire from office and retain the pompous title of “Supreme Guide to Patriotism”. The new President will be required to consult the “Supreme Guide” on matters of national security and unity. Nkurunziza has apparently forgotten what happened to former Angolan President Eduardo dos Santos whose delusion of indispensability eventually led to his humiliation. 

I digress slightly. The point I am really trying to make is that in Burundi, not even the country’s Muslim population had any need to worry about COVID-19. Before the eid, the government of Burundi expelled World Health Organization officials from the country on the ground that they had become “persona non grata.” International election observers and monitors were informed that they would be quarantined if they showed up in the country to observe any election. The international community stayed away.   

Now let us switch the lens to Nigeria. Days before the eid-al-fitri 2020, the Nigerian Government on May 4 eased restrictions that had been imposed by the Federal Government on Ogun, Lagos states and the Federal Capital Territory, not for religious reasons, but as part of a “phased and gradual process” of re-opening the Nigerian space while also addressing the multi-faceted challenges of COVID-19. State governments also began to relax the restriction orders in their states, with the entire country bound to enforce the uniform ban on inter-state travel and the emplacement of a nationwide curfew from 8 pm to 6 am. There were specific regulations and guidelines for restaurants, places of religious worship, human relationships, work place protocols etc. There was a big push-back from ordinary Nigerians who had grown weary of the lockdown, as well as pundits and business owners who felt that the lockdown will not work in Africa but the biggest resistance came from religious leaders especially Pentecostal church leaders who argued from all corners of their mouths about either 5G technology or the damage that the lockdown was doing to the church economy.  There were exceptions though: on the mainstream Christian side- the Catholic Church, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), and on the Pentecostal side: Pastors Enoch Adeboye, Tunde Bakare, Sam Adeyemi and Paul Adefarasin… 

If Muslim leaders were opposed to the lockdown, they were quiet with their objections. The Christian leaders were loud and aggressive. One of them even said if government could allow markets to re-open, churches should also be re-opened. However, the fact that Muslim leaders were also not entirely quiet soon became evident as many states in the North began to announce that religious worship was in order, and that mosques and churches could re-open even as COVID-19 figures in Nigeria increased geometrically. In due course, these states: Kano, Bauchi, Taraba, Nasarawa, Gombe, Yobe, Niger, Adamawa, Cross River, Delta… lifted the ban on worship centres, with the convenient caveat of course that the rules of physical distancing and (2) attendance relative to building capacity and (3) the threshold of 20 persons per gathering must be respected. All the Governors claimed that they were responding to pressures from religious leaders. The Governor of Kano claimed he was advised by Islamic Scholars. The Council of Ulamas in Kano State insisted that they were not consulted. The Sultan of Sokoto, the Head of the Muslim Ummah in Nigeria and head of the Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) issued a statement directing all Muslims in Nigeria to observe the eid prayers at home, because the eid-al-fitri is not fard (that is obligatory). President Muhammadu Buhari also issued a statement saying nobody should visit him to pay eid homage as is customary and that people should pray at home. 

But in reality, what Nigeria and many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa are faced with is the threat of an exponential rise in COVID-19 cases post eid-al-fitri. In Kano state which is second on the Nigerian COVID-19 League Table, the guidelines were observed more in the breach. The Kano elite at the prayer grounds hypocritically tried to maintain social distancing but nobody provided minimum care for the ordinary people who risked their lives in the name of religion. In Minna, Niger state, there was reportedly a heavy downpour. People abandoned their masks and rushed into the mosque where they huddled together. The Nation newspaper (Nigeria, May 25) reports that Southern Muslims in Nigeria observed the eid in their homes. In the Northern part of the country, where the Northern Governors Forum most recently announced that the region accounts for 54% of reported cases, and 70% of fresh infections, the prayer grounds were unlocked from Kano to Borno, by the same leaders who had only a few days earlier acknowledged a brewing crisis in their region. Does that make sense? 

I have tried to paint the picture above simply to revisit the commendation that Africa has received for beating the world’s expectations with regard to COVID-19 sero-prevalence. The eid celebration is merely a peg. At a recent Africa.Com Webinar Series 6 with the theme: “What’s the real story behind Africa’s COVID-19 figures?”, the WHO Regional Director Ms Rebecca Moeti expressed enthusiasm about the fact that whereas WHO expected higher COVID-19 cases in Africa, the numbers have been lower than expected. She praised African countries. Both the WHO DG and the UN Secretary General have also had cause to commend Nigeria. The praise for Africa may be premature. It is not justified by the attitude of many of the leaders and the behaviour of the people. Could the real story in Africa be - that not enough testing is being done resulting in gross undercount or that corruption has further mutated COVID-19 into a strain that is yet unknown to the world? Or is the virus un-African? These are the key questions. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the entire world – the future of everything and the world of work, but perhaps the most visible effect of this disruption is most felt in the financial services sector, the markets and the global economy. In this regard, the banking sector is one of the most gravely impacted. It would be useful to reflect a little on the extent to which this is so in Nigeria and the meaning of the multi-dimensional implications, and hopefully, someday, someone will take on the task of analyzing in greater detail, bank-customer relations and the role of the banks in the time of COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria. I seek to provide a preliminary sketch, throw up a few posers and make some observations. 

When on March 29, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari announced the imposition of an initial two-week lockdown on Lagos and Ogun States and the Federal Capital Territory, the three parts of the country that had then presented a higher COVID-19 sero-prevalence, he exempted healthcare workers, security personnel, pharmaceutical companies, oil company workers, the country’s food supply chain, the media, and other essential workers. His speech made no mention of the banks.

This omission was addressed the following day, March 30, by the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning and the Governor of the Central Bank who further informed the public that Nigerian banks/money markets would also be expected to provide essential services during the period of the lock-down. Obviously, during the period of the lock down, Nigerians would need money either in terms of access to cash, or the completion of pending transactions, transfers, payments and savings. In April, the Federal Government further extended the lockdown by another two weeks and yet by another week, towards the end of the month. As it turned out, other states of the Federation relying on Section 8 of the Quarantine Act and enabling state laws also enforced their own versions of the lockdown.  Effectively, Nigeria became part of the global response to COVID-19. People were asked to stay at home, stay safe, follow guidelines, and avoid the risk of infection and transmission. It all happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly.  Nobody was prepared for it. There were reports of harvests of death in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Fear gripped the world. Panic reigned. People asked the inevitable question: will humanity survive given the virulence of the virus? As people stayed at home and off the streets, they still needed to survive. Nobody had withdrawn cash or saved towards COVID-19. The importance of access to the banks and to cash was writ large; earning an income became a matter of life and death for households and businesses. The world thus found itself in a pre-historic Darwinian situation where only the fittest survived. The banks in Nigeria were not of much help. Their rating in terms of customer relations/support fell. 

The banks simply refused to open their doors to customers. The few that pretended to do so in Lagos, provided only skeletal services. People were advised to make withdrawals using Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), but most of these machines had no cash supply, and where they had, long queues could be seen daily, without anyone observing the physical distancing guidelines. Digital banking transactions, which had been touted as the new way of the world, proved difficult. If you went directly to an open branch, you would be kept waiting by a gate man who knew nothing about banking. He would return later to tell you that the officer hidden inside the banking hall would need to contact someone at the Headquarters. Many account officers who attended to the middle class were also under quarantine. Their phones were switched off. A major pillar of the banking business - making the customer happy, collapsed. The bankers took their own survival more seriously. The customer was no longer king! COVID 19 is the great destroyer of all known norms. It has shifted paradigms and turned the table against all known norms. 

When on one occasion, I had cause to protest, I was told that the banks were also being careful. They needed to protect their staff. They would not allow customers to bring the virus into their banking halls.  They had also recorded quite a few cases of fraud during the lockdown. So does that justify the scarcity of cash at cash points and the epileptic e-banking platforms?  It will be recalled that the Central Bank of Nigeria introduced a Financial Inclusion Strategy in 2016, the objective of which was to promote electronic banking and mobile money transactions. This led to the increasing digitalization of banking transactions in the country and the emergence of such features as the use of POS, e-banking and payment service agents. Whereas this has been hailed as a progressive development, Nigeria remains far behind other countries like Kenya and South Africa, where a higher rate of financial inclusion has been recorded. Nigeria’s slow penetration rate in this regard was exposed by the COVID-19 lockdown and indeed in reality, Nigeria remains under-banked; its banking practices are still far behind.  

For many subsistence workers whose survival depended on daily work, the banking situation was worse because these blue-collar workers live or suffer relative to their daily hustle. Whatever work that linked them to the banking value-added chain was cut off.  The extended family community that often helps to bridge the gap in Africa, was also adversely affected. Nigerians in Diaspora whose financial remittances constitute a major source of oxygen for local households and the economy also ran into troubled waters. In every sense, Nigeria’s financial sector faced a severe respiratory crisis with corresponding implications for economic growth and social stability. It didn’t take long before Nigerians especially the youth, became restive. A social crisis loomed large in the horizon. In Lagos and Ogun States, neighborhoods were attacked by those who called themselves “One Million Boys”. The rich became afraid of their own shadows. Nigerian banks had to take extra security measures. Organized Labour and the Organized Private Sector began to push the argument that the lockdown would not work in Africa, and that it was better government re-opened the business space.  

On April 27, it may be said that the Federal Government succumbed to pressure when in a nationwide broadcast, President Muhammadu Buhari announced a “phased and gradual” easing of the lockdown in the Federal Capital Territory, Ogun and Lagos States, with the same advice for other parts of the Federation subject to their own peculiar circumstances with regard to COVID-19.  The responses were varied. Ogun State chose to defer its own relaxation of the lockdown by a week, having joined a week later than the FCT and Lagos State. On May 17, the state announced yet a further extension of the lockdown. Other states of the Federation again took their cue from the Federal Government in due course. Delta, Ebonyi, Katsina, and Borno states have since allowed mosques and churches to re-open. Kaduna state and others have also announced relaxed measures. Across the country, a curfew remains in place from 8 pm to 6am. Inter-state travel has been banned, even if there are concerns about the movement of the almajirai across state borders with many of them testing positive for COVID-19. In the face of new guidelines, banks also opened their doors.  

But even then, bank customers are still unhappy, particularly in Lagos and the Federal Capital Territory. The banks remain an index of the people’s frustration. From May 4 to date, the premises of virtually every bank has been a war zone. Customers besiege the banks daily, without caring about either physical or social distancing rules. They sit outside or they queue up in a long, snaky, stretch. The people seem determined to die, if possible, just to gain access to their bank accounts. The queues are long. The desperation is palpable. A few banks have since provided tents and chairs in front of their branches. I won’t be surprised if in the third week of the easing of the lockdown, some Nigerian banks also begin to provide mattresses and mats!. Those queues may not disappear unless the banks open up more branches and pay better attention to customer care. 

Just how serious this is, was brought to the fore in a now popular, and sensational video, showing the Chairman of Ikwerre Local Government in Rivers State, Samuel Nwanosike who led a mini-task force to a branch of the United Bank for Africa (UBA) to disperse a crowd of bank customers, who did not wear face masks, and did not observe physical or social distancing.  “Do you want to kill my people?”, Nwanosike asked the bank officials, angrily. “Who is the bank manager here?... Who is the second in command?” One bank official told him: “The people are not listening to us”. There may be a lot to learn from this as all businesses adjust to a “new normal” occasioned by a capricious virus.   

The banks and their sympathizers insist however, that they do not deserve any blame, vulnerable as they are like every other business, without any measurable support from either government or their regulator, and yet they continue to play their part as responsible corporate citizens. There is probably a point here: it is on record that the banks and their CEOs enthusiastically joined the Private Sector Coalition Against COVID-19 known as CA-COVID which has so far raised over N27 billion. It is part of the burden that banks face that many of their customers think that the donations should have been given to them directly since the banks have their bank accounts and verification numbers. The banks were accused of seeking tax reliefs, and their CEOs, of promoting their own individual egos.

But perhaps the biggest challenge for Nigerian banks, and the extent of their vulnerability, emerged when a tele-conference video was leaked, showing the CEO of Access Bank, Herbert Wigwe, in which he announced that Access Bank was going to cut staff salaries and retrench staff as part of its business continuity and sustainability plans in the context of a public health crisis that has crippled business. The leakage of the Access Bank video was met with outrage. Wigwe was called names. The Bank was abused. A few days later, the Central Bank of Nigeria in response to this drama, announced that no bank is allowed to cut any job without its express approval, and that indeed job cuts in the banking sector are forbidden at this time. Access Bank denied the video that was in circulation. Stakeholders may accuse Nigerian banks of lapses in the face of COVID-19 but the truth is that the attack on Wigwe and Access Bank was totally unwarranted. In my view, Wigwe showed leadership and was honest. 

The only “COVI-diot” in the Access Bank matter is the disloyal staff who leaked the content of an in-house conversation. No serious organization should condone that kind of treachery. Wigwe says salaries will be cut and branches will be rationalized. Last year, Access Bank acquired Diamond Bank in one of the biggest Merger and Acquisitions that the Nigerian banking sector has witnessed in the past decade. Since that merger, Access Bank has not rationalized staff or branch networks. It simply inherited all the branches and staff that belonged to the defunct Diamond Bank resulting in a situation where you could have up to three branches of the same bank on the same street. Access Bank may have chosen the wrong time to announce its business re-design plan, but it is confronted with a reality that every business would have to deal with. But the question should be asked: Is it part of the work of the regulator to dictate cost and business models? 

Before COVID-19, one of the problems Nigerian banks faced was that of over-regulation by the Central Bank. Regulatory high-handedness hampered the capacity of the banks. Many of the banks also faced the threat of deteriorating credit quality due to over-exposure particularly to ailing sectors - oil and gas and the power companies. COVID-19, collapsing oil prices and naira devaluation turned the crisis in the banking sector into a triple whammy. Micro-finance Banks are losing over N45 billion uncollected loans. To all intents and purposes, it is part of the role of the Central bank to protect the banks and stave off the possibility of corrosive stress. Elsewhere we have seen Central Banks intervening to protect the banking sector. The Central Bank of Nigeria has made useful interventions in other areas– to protect SMEs, pharmaceuticals, loans, manufacturing sector, agriculture… but it has done little to strengthen the capacity of the banks to survive as business. 

The plug on job cuts, or the furloughing of bank staff is at best the postponement of the evil day. Bank staff as well as other employees must prepare for the worst. Many businesses will end up as part of the COVID-19 death rate statistics. Jobs will die too. Previous pandemics posted a V-shaped recovery trajectory. There are no such guarantees this time around. A U-shaped recovery scenario may even be optimistic. Many economies will sink in an L-shaped format. And that is where leadership matters. What should leaders do in relation to economic risks and the structural legacy of COVID-19?  This is the kind of rigorous thinking we need to see instead of the same government that wants to implement the Oronsaye Report, cut cost and ensure economic sustainability telling banks and other businesses that they cannot cut costs. The mixed messaging that has characterized Nigeria’s management of the COVID-19 tragedy so far points to serious issues of governance. 

The Board of Governors and the Ethics Committee of the African Development Bank (AfDB) have given Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, the Bank’s President, a clean bill of health in a report dated May 5, wherein it is stated that Adesina has been “entirely exonerated of all allegations made against him.” The background to that development is useful and it is as follows: 

On January 19, a group of anonymous whistle-blowers who described themselves as “a group of concerned staff members” of the AfDB prepared a document titled “Disclosure of Acts Related to Alleged Breach of Code of Ethics by an Elected Officer, to the Attention of the Director of the Integrity and Anti-Corruption Department (PIAC) and the Chairpersons of the AUFI and Ethics Committees.” The “elected officer” in question is Akinwumi Adesina, the Nigerian President of the Bank. The whistleblowers wanted him to be investigated for alleged breach of the institution’s Code of Conduct, in order to check fraud and corruption and prevent an institutional crisis. In that January document, Adesina is accused of non-respect of internal rules and regulations in recruitment, nepotism, impunity, questionable award of contracts, preferential treatment of Nigeria and Nigerians, using Bank resources to collect awards in personal capacity, political lobbying of Heads of State, and turning himself into “the unchallenged travel champion of the Bank.” On March 3, six weeks after the group submitted its petition, it protested that the Ethics Committee was either unable or unwilling to investigate the 16 allegations it raised against Adesina and that there was evidence that certain forces were trying to prevent the Ethics Committee from doing its work. It urged the Ethics Committee to commission an independent investigation. In April 2020, this same “Group of Concerned Staff Members” submitted yet another petition against Adesina titled “Additional Cases of Alleged Breach of the Code of Ethics by the President of the African Development Bank Group to the Attention of the Governors of the African Development Group.” They raised four additional allegations including “use of Bank resources for self-promotion and private gains” and abuse of due process in the appointment of country managers. 

There was however a twist in the tale when a counter-complaint, dated March 13, was submitted to the Chairman of the Ethics Committee by another group, called “a group of indignant members” who denounced the “Group of Concerned Staff Members” and stated clearly that they were “outraged” by the latter’s attempt to “take hostage of our institution.” They claimed that the mastermind of the anti-Adesina protest is a certain Executive Director  -  Stephen DOWD (American, member of the Ethics Committee) and a group of non-regional Executive Directors who are “not for the good governance of the African Bank of Development but to discredit the candidacy of the current President for his re-election.” The “indignant members” disclosed that they were members of the “Group of Concerned Staff Members” until they discovered that they were being manipulated by Dowd and other non-regional Executive Directors. They asked the Ethics Committee to investigate Dowd. The Concerned Members rebutted this and said the indignant members were never part of their group. 

All the petitioners on both sides of the aisle, pro- and anti-Adesina did not reveal their true identities but it was obvious that there was sharp division within the bank over Adesina’s leadership and tension between regional directors and non-regional directors of the Bank. The externalization of the conflict was bad for the image of the institution. Akinwumi Adesina himself did not hesitate to proclaim his innocence.  In an April 6, 2020 statement, he wrote: “I am 100% confident that due process and transparency, based on facts and evidence, will indicate that these are all nothing more than spurious and unfounded allegations.” Now, with his exoneration by the Bank’s Ethics Committee last week, Adesina can claim to have been vindicated. He received an added morale booster when Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari congratulated him and described him as a good ambassador of Africa and Nigeria. Both votes of confidence should bring huge relief to Adesina’s friends and supporters within and outside the Bank and brighten his chances of re-election for a second term.   

There is little doubt that Adesina’s emergence as AfDB President, his leadership style, and his reform efforts constructed around what he calls the High Fives continue to ruffle some feathers within the Bank. His emergence in 2015 was hotly contested. But with President Goodluck Jonathan, then President-elect Muhammadu Buhari, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and many other African leaders strongly behind him, it was easy for him to score 60% of the votes to beat seven other contestants including Chad’s Bedoumbra Kodje, Zimbabwe’s Thomas Sakala, Ethiopia’s Sufian Ahmed and Cape Verde’s Cristina Duarte (the choice of non-regional members). On his part, Adesina came to the competition with excellent professional and academic credentials - a First Class in Agricultural Economics from the then University of Ife, Nigeria, Ph.D, Purdue University, former Vice-President, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA),  former senior economist, West African Rice Development Association (WARDA),  former senior scientist, Rockefeller Foundation, and Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development (2011 – 2015). Above all, Adesina is hardworking, focused, highly driven, cosmopolitan, and self-motivated… We worked together in the Jonathan government. 

The 2015 AfDB election was particularly important to Nigeria. In 2005, Nigeria’s Olabisi Ogunjobi lost the AfDB position to Rwanda’s Donald Kaberuka who went on to serve two terms. To become AfDB President, a candidate must have a double majority of the African and non-regional members. Nigeria is AfDB’s largest shareholder with over 9% of the capital and yet since the AfDB was established in 1964, it was only in 2015, that it got its candidate elected for the first time as President of the Bank. Akinwumi Adesina became the presumptive President on May 28, 2015 and assumed office on September 1, the same year.  He had hardly settled down in office before France began to complain that he rarely speaks French, whereas he is fluent in both English and French. Three Vice Presidents also left the Bank. The conspiracy against him reared its head early, and has re-emerged more aggressively towards the end of his first term. 

Nonetheless, Adesina has had a good run in his first five years as President of the AfDB. No one can doubt neither his commitment and passion, nor his resolve that the mission of the AfDB is to help accelerate the development of Africa, create a new Africa, and provide new opportunities for every African. He has also been very outspoken in promoting partnerships, calling upon bilateral and multilateral institutions to support Africa to build infrastructure, human capital and ramp up economic growth. Under Akinwumi Adesina, the AfDB has consistently maintained its AAA rating achieved under Donald Kaberuka. The Bank is also comparatively more innovative, people-oriented and far more visible. It is better decentralized. Its standing among global financial institutions is strong. The Bank’s income has increased. It is far richer today than it has ever been. 

In recognition of his efforts, Adesina has been widely decorated with honours and awards. He has been named African of the Year (2019) by the African Leadership Magazine; countries have decorated him with their national honours – Senegal, Liberia, Tunisia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Togo.  Universities have awarded him Honorary Doctorate degrees.  

In 2017, he won the World Food Prize, which is regarded as the Nobel Prize for Agriculture. In 2019, he received both the All Africa Business Leaders African of the Year award and the Sunhak Peace Prize. His critics allege that he uses his position for self-promotion. Every award that Adesina has received as AfDB President is never without an acknowledgement of the achievements of the Bank. He has also used the opportunities presented by his international recognition to promote African causes. The World Food Prize came with a tidy sum of $250, 000 and the Sunhak Prize, $500, 000.  What did he do? He donated all the prize money, his own personal contributions and the support of friends and philanthropists, to set up a Borlaug-Adesina Fellowship Programme and the World Hunger Fighters Foundation to fight global hunger. Norman Borlaug, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate established the World Food Prize in 1986. The Borlaug-Adesina Fellowship is managed by the World Hunger Fighters Foundation. It has already graduated a number of Fellows. 

But for me, perhaps if there is any personal gain for the bank’s President, it is the manner in which he has managed to emerge as a role model for many young Africans who want to study Agriculture and Economics because of him. They also want to become agri-preneurs because they believe him when he says the future of Africa is in the agriculture value-chain and that agriculture is not land cultivation, but big business. 

Adesina’s finest moment is perhaps not the honours and awards that he has received but his presence at the 45^th G7 Summit held in Biarritz, France, 24 -26 August, 2019.  This was at a time when the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that it had arrested one Invictus Obi and was looking for about 80 other Nigerians who over a period had been involved in identity theft and wire fraud in the United States. It was a low moment for many Nigerians at home: some of our compatriots had again damaged the country’s image and denigrated the Nigerian Green passport. It was at this exact time that the pictures of Akinwumi Adesina, another Nigerian, showed up in the media, meeting with world leaders at a G7 Summit in France. The G7 Summit is a meeting of the most powerful leaders in the world. And there was Akinwumi Adesina having a tete-a-tete with President Donald Trump, shown in conversations with Chancellor Angela Merkel and others, standing side by side with the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. Many young Nigerians drew inspiration from this. Their reaction was that Adesina at a critical moment helped to show, unwittingly as it were, that there are gifted Nigerians making positive contributions, who can be admitted into distinguished, global company. Many said they would want to be like him. Others wanted him to return home to run for the Nigerian Presidency in 2023. I am sure Adesina himself would not be so tempted. He must have learnt a lesson or two about African politics when he served as Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture. Participation in partisan politics in Africa requires many adaptations that many intellectuals or technocrats may not be best suited for, except of course, they are willing to take the risk and damn the consequences. 

Hence, understandably, much earlier, on June 14, 2019, at the 54^th Annual Meeting of the Bank in Malabo, Equitorial Guinea, Adesina announced his intention to run for a second term as President of the AfDB. The election was meant to take place during the 55th Annual Meeting of the Bank which was originally scheduled for May 25 -29, 2020 but which due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the “resulting global disruption” has now been re-scheduled for August 25 -27. Adesina’s supporters insist that the attack on him by the “Group of Concerned Staff Members” is meant to politicize and frustrate his re-election bid. Apart from his open proclamation of innocence, Adesina has also been very philosophical about the attack on his person and tenure. A devout Christian and a prayer-warrior,  each time President Jonathan asked him to lead the Council in prayers in those days, you were bound to receive a song and a long prayer with Pentecostal flavor and quiet murmurings from across the Chamber that the prayer warrior should make his supplications brief, and so it is not surprising that as the allegations against him circulated, Adesina occasionally resorted to prayers and Bible passages (Psalm 60:12; 2 Corinthians 12:9) on his twitter account. 

Prayers can help but there is a lot more to be done. The verdict of the Ethics Committee may be favorable but still, that is not the end of it. President Muhammadu Buhari has re-affirmed Nigeria’s support for Dr. Akinwumi Adesina. The African Union (AU) and all the Heads of State and Governments of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have also openly endorsed him for a second term. AU Chair, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and others have, most recently, commended Adesina and the AfDB for announcing a $10 billion facility to fight Corona Virus in Africa. He also enjoys the backing of Africa’s Organized Private Sector. Former President of Liberia, Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson has told Adesina that African leaders trust him. “We trust you,” she said. 

But Dr. Adesina must study the power game a bit more closely. Will his enemies quietly accept their humiliation and sheathe their swords? Do they have any hidden aces up their sleeves, especially as it has been suggested that they are being sponsored by non-regional stakeholders? What is their strength? Can they still do any damage? The AfDB comprises 54 African countries and 27 non-African members, the latest in the latter category is Ireland. AfDB voting power is weighted relative to share of capital, with Nigeria, United States, Japan and Egypt having the greatest share.  Does he have enough numbers to gain the required double majority?  Even if he does, my take is that the re-scheduling of the 55^th Annual General Meeting of the AfDB offers him an advantage. He has the advantage of more time to embark on diplomatic and fence-mending outreaches to turn his adversaries within the system into friends. He and his allies must not ignore those aggrieved “whistle-blowers” or seek to shame them. This is not the time for triumphalism. The right thing to do is to engage the naysayers. Adesina’s overall goal should be a united, inclusive, democratic and open AfDB, not a divided institution. The AfDB must remain focused on its development objectives not in-house politicking. 

In 2010, Donald Kaberuka (Rwanda) was re-elected by acclamation. Before him, Omar Kabbaj (Morocco) was also re-elected in 1995. There is no reason why Akinwumi Adesina, a sole candidate, should not be re-elected. He has earned it. Nigeria deserves it. The Nigerian Government should stand by Adesina to ensure his re-election. 

This is a piece around and about what I have seen about Corona Virus in Nigeria, from a sociological perspective, and not a report of any pathogenic experience. It has been more than a month since the Federal Government placed Lagos and Ogun states, and the Federal Capital Territory on a lockdown on account of the spread of COVID-19 in those three parts of the country. Ogun state asked to be allowed to join the lockdown a week later to allow the people in the state to stock up on food and other essentials which is why as Lagos and the FCT began from May 4, what the President of Nigeria referred to as a “gradual and phased” easing of restrictions, Ogun State will remain on partial lockdown till May 10. Other states of the Federation following the President’s cue have also announced a relaxation of the lockdown which most of them imposed in line with Section 8 of the Quarantine Act and enabling state laws. 

While the lockdown lasted, I was able to go to the Arise TV studio to co-anchor The Morning Show (TMS), armed with every possible piece of evidence to show that I was on the road as an essential worker. Not many people have acknowledged the fact that journalists like health workers are frontline workers in the face of COVID-19. No matter how bad a situation may be, in times of war and disaster, it is the duty of journalists to be out there on the field, to report the situation, act as the bridge between government and the people, offer analysis, news and entertainment and help society. It is therefore surprising that stakeholders are not pushing the idea of a Media Intervention Fund to support media houses reeling from the impact of COVID-19. Here in Nigeria, both the electronic and print media are suffering. With businesses shut down and the people locked up at home, sales have dropped. In pursuing the news, journalists are also often exposed to extreme danger. Globally, 55 journalists have died from COVID-19 in 23 countries.   

On my way to and fro the studio, I observed in the first week of the lockdown, that the streets of Lagos were literally empty.  It was a different Lagos: ordinarily a city of crazy traffic snarls, Lagos roads looked desolate and for the period that this lasted, I silently wished that the city could be just as peaceful on a permanent basis. Lagos roads are ever so chaotic because of urban planning crisis and the failure to institute a functional multi-modal transportation system in the city. The only reliable means of transportation is by road. There is no metro line in place. There has been so much talk about water transportation by successive administrations in the state but that doesn’t quite work either. Every morning, half of the people in the mainland part of the city troop out of their homes to go to work on the Island, and they return in the opposite direction every evening. No one has made any attempt to decentralize the city and ease congestion. COVID-19 provided an opportunity to see what Lagos would probably look like if it was a much better planned city. 

In the first week, I saw policemen, soldiers, officials of the Federal Road Safety Corps and the Neighbourhood Watch mounting checkpoints at strategic parts of the city. It looked like the lockdown was working. But by the second week, everything had begun to change. Many Lagosians could not stay at home for long.  I noticed a horde of persons trekking towards the Island, converging at bus stops in open violation of the lockdown order. In parts of the city, young men in the neighborhoods turned open spaces into football fields.  Every major football league in the world had been suspended, every sporting event that involves any form of contact between persons had been postponed, but around Lagos, young boys were playing their own tournaments, something they called in some places, “the Corona Cup”. I often wondered every day, why the security agents on the road, seeing this and the danger it posed, did not bother to disperse the suicidal football players. I also began to see groups of persons huddling together in the early hours of the morning under the guise of physical work-outs and exercise.

As the days passed, it began to look as if the security agents were now part of the problem.  In Delta state, there was the report of a young man who was gunned down by soldiers at a COVID-19 checkpoint. They had asked him to stop but one thing led to the other, and the fellow was murdered. Policemen in Lagos and elsewhere went to bars and restaurants and markets and brutalized persons on the grounds that they defied the rules on lockdown and social distancing. The highhandedness of the security agents added to the people’s anxiety. However, the attitude of the security agents was at best, ambiguous. Some of them behaved as if they were genuinely on the road to enforce the lockdown, others behaved as if this was an opportunity for them to engage in a power tussle with the people. 

One morning, I was stopped at a checkpoint. The police man who came to the car didn’t look or sound friendly at all. 

“Officer, well done. I am a journalist. I am on way back from the office.” 

“Which one is journalist? Have you not heard that you people should stay at home? What are you doing on the road wearing coat, putting tie for neck?”

“Officer, you see, journalists are exempted from the lockdown. We fall into the category of essential workers. The President himself said so. A journalist is just like you at this time of COVID-19.” 

The man cut me short. He brought up his gun to a higher level without pointing it in any direction. I respected myself and kept quiet. Some security agents had only a week earlier killed a man in Warri South. 

“Who is talking about journalist? You dey compare me to journalist?” I said nothing. “Where is the proof you are a journalist?,” he barked.

I told him that I would provide whatever proof he needed, but on the condition that he will not touch my identity card, or the letter from Arise TV. I brought out the letter and my identity card and I asked him to look at both from a distance. The man was literally foaming at the mouth. He looked rough and dirty. He yelled at me: “How am I supposed read the letter and your identity card from inside your car?” I told him there is something called social distancing. Has he heard of it? 

“I beg go away with your wahala! Na dat one we dey talk? “, he bellowed and immediately flagged down the next vehicle.  As we drove off, my driver who had been watching the entire exchange offered an opinion: 

“Daddy, you sef. All those things you were telling the man, why do you think he will be interested? The man was drunk. All those things about essential worker, social distancing do not mean anything to him. You should just have given him money.” 

 “I will not bribe any security agent. I have a right to be on the road!,” I quipped.

But it was not always that the security men on the road proved difficult. Most of the time once they saw the press sticker on the windscreen, they would not even bother to stop the car. A few of them tried to double-check. I recall telling another policeman: “Journalist! Media!”.

“Oga, I don see the signboard for your windscreen oh. But anybody fit carry placard say dem be media. Wey your Coro-permit?”  Coro-permit. That was a new one on me. Could it be that the government had been issuing COVID-19 permits and I was not aware? 

“Officer, Coro-permit? What is that? I am not sure I have a Coro-permit.” 

“Coro-permit. Every journalist wey don pass this place get Coro-permit. When we ask them, they show  us. Oga, wey your own?”

I brought out a letter and showed him. He looked at it from a distance, and screamed: “Oga, you get Coro-permit! Na your Coro-permit be dat.” 

The policeman and I started laughing as he waved us off. I laughed all the way to the studio! Coro-permit!         

But there was no cause for laughter when after the lockdown in Lagos was modified and markets were allowed to open between 10 am and 2 pm, I had an encounter with a female Federal Road Safety Corps official. On this particular occasion, the driver and the housekeeper had gone to the market to buy foodstuff. The standard practice was that the driver will not drive onto the main road. He will park inside the Estate and the housekeeper will walk down to the market, while the driver waited for her. But due to the crisis of youth restiveness that reared its head by the third week of the lockdown, with less privileged persons and young boys attacking neighbourhoods and asking to be fed, the Residents Association took a decision to lock up every gate, leaving only one of the gates open in order to monitor movements. For this reason, the driver and the housekeeper claimed they had to drive onto the main road. 

Somehow, they overstayed in the market. By 2:05 pm, they were already calling me frantically. They had been arrested by a Road Safety team, and the vehicle had been seized. I asked them to give the phone to the most senior FRSC official in the team. I introduced myself to her and pleaded that she should “please, let my people go”. She refused. She said a big crime had been committed and that everyone involved will be punished. She even threatened that if I dared to come to their office, she would release the younger persons and detain me along with the car. I begged her again to release the food items and allow the young persons to come home. She refused and cut off the phone. I called back and asked the driver to take the phone to her.  She snapped at me:

“Mr. Man stop calling me. I don’t care about any Benjamin Abati or what did you call yourself? I won’t release this car.”

“But Madam, how about the food items?”

“Those food items are part of the exhibits!”

My driver later called back to say that he thought there was a solution to the problem. There were other persons whose vehicles had been seized, and if they offered money, they were promptly released, but the only problem was that the Madam would not collect N10, 000. It had to be more than N10, 000. I was advised to find something like N70, 000. I became infuriated. I told the young man, I would not pay a penny, instead he should try and get me the offensive officer’s name. His subsequent response was that she was not wearing a name tag. I resolved to prove to the woman that her job does not include being rude to others just because she wears a uniform…But she subsequently realised her folly and allowed “my people to go”. 

On May 4, the easing of the lockdown began in Lagos and other parts of the country. The Nigerian government is depending on the security agencies to enforce its guidelines. That can only work if security agents act with discretion and common sense. I am very skeptical about government’s decision to relax the lockdown so early. In a previous piece, I drew attention to the failure of such a similar step in Denver, Colorado, during the Spanish Flu of 1918. Attention has also been drawn to a similar mistake in Marseilles, France between 1720 and 1722 during the bubonic plague. Businesses in both instances mounted pressure on government but the easing of the lockdown merely resulted in more infections and deaths. My fear is that the Nigerian government is about to make the same mistake. I hear it is called herd immunity: in the face of an epidemic, allow the people to go out, those who will live will, whoever will die, will die. This herd immunity response is a kind of religious providentialism but when people do not listen to science, they may end up counting the cost in terms of body bags. As it was in the past, so it is now. In the United States, there is an agitation nationwide for the lifting of restrictions but in the states where this has been done, like Georgia for example, there has been a spike in infections. There was a similar outcome in Germany recently. Nigeria must avoid copy and paste solutions to COVID-19. The numbers are rising and yet we want to re-open, even in Kano state where a toxic combination of corona virus and a leadership virus is killing the people in their hundreds. 

In Lagos, yesterday, people trooped out in their thousands. The hitherto empty roads were busy, jam-packed. There were large crowds in front of every bank. The public buses were filled to capacity. For the first time in five weeks, there were traffic gridlocks again. Curiously, I did not see security agents on the road. Across the country, Nigerians besieged markets, banks and bus stations as if COVID-19 is a fictional tale.  Apparently, what the people heard was that they were now free to go out. I am not sure they heard that part of the statement about “gradual and phased easing” and the guidelines announced by government, particularly the need for social and physical distancing. The Presidential Task Force has asked them to “take responsibility”, which simply means “You are on your own. We as government have tried our best. We have also offered you advice. Take it or leave it.”  It is unfortunate that a country will leave the people to their own devices so soon, in the face of this murderous pandemic. Government should not hesitate to review or reverse its decision if there is a sudden explosion in the number of COVID-19 cases. Endangering people’s lives is not in the country’s best interest. 

The global economy is in a tailspin. IMF and the World Bank have both predicted a contraction of the global economy with developing economies likely to be worst affected. This situation is the direct result of the menace of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the energy crisis that the world faces. With many businesses and factories on lockdown, with the tourism and travel industry playing possum, the world is confronted with a demand and supply shock, and a financial and economic shock in addition to a catalytic global health crisis, the end of which no one knows. Commodity dependent countries like Nigeria, Algeria and Angola, in the absence of buffers to deal with endogenous and exogenous shocks are in dire straits. The Micro, Small and Medium Scale Sector is also facing special difficulties. In a country like Nigeria where SMEs account for about 85% of the economy, many businesses are bound to declare bankruptcy or die off, sending millions of persons into the unemployment market. Before COVID-19, Nigeria’s unemployment rate stood at over 23%. This will get worse. Nigeria’s GDP growth profile for 2020 has been downgraded from a possibility of 2.4% to about 1.3%, and with projected contractions of 0.5% in the first quarter and 0.3% in the second quarter, Nigeria’s economic outlook for 2020 and beyond is severe. Many other countries are in a similar situation, even if the degree of vulnerability varies. 

Only last week, Arik Air took the decision to cut the salary of its staff by 80% for the month of April; by May, it says it will ask 90% of its workforce to proceed on leave without pay until further notice. Arik Air expects its staff to understand the situation in which the company has found itself. In March, the Nigerian government shut down the country’s airports to prevent the importation of COVID-19 cases into the country. Arik and other airlines, as is the case with other airlines worldwide have not been able to do business or earn regular revenue. Another company, Mikano International Nigeria Ltd., has already sacked over 600 of its workers due to the biting effect of COVID-19. More companies are bound to take similar steps, to cut cost and ensure business continuity. What makes the situation worse is that the adverse economic impact of Corona Virus is bound to last longer than the disease itself. This is probably the most disruptive aspect of the current global experience.  

The effect is already most telling at the individual and household levels. Many have referred to the similarity between COVID-19 and the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, but except for a minority of persons who were alive in 1918 and are still alive today, the fact is that the present generation is totally unfamiliar with a pandemic of this scale. It is for us, a strange phenomenon. It has disrupted our lives and our world. Many bread winners have lost their bread. In many homes, pronounced poverty has become a reality. As lockdowns continue, families find their resources being depleted, or they sink deeper into debts, as an epidemic of empty pockets rears its head. Thus, a poverty pandemic is certain, especially in developing countries where there are no social safety nets, or unemployment benefits, and when that is combined with a COVID-19 pandemic, the consequences could be fatal for society. 

Meanwhile, in many African countries, both governments and the people are arguing over whether or not a prolonged lockdown can help check the spread of COVID-19, and how best Africa can adjust its response strategy to basic realities in the continent. For example, Africa has a huge population of self-employed persons in the informal sector: an army of cab drivers, motorcyclists, barbers, event-centre managers, hairstylists, make up artists, artisans and traders who work daily to earn a living and are now stranded at home, unable to sustain themselves. Their home economics has been violated. Their daily source of income has been wiped out. While the rich may have savings and be able to fall back on financial reserves, the poor who hardly ever save, and rarely have any surplus to save for the rainy day, because for them it rains every day, are most vulnerable. The effect as seen in Nigeria, is that many people are beginning to defy the lockdown order and government’s determination to enforce it. The hungry and the angry can be seen on the streets of Lagos begging for food and money, or threatening to attack the rich. There is a looming crisis of social unrest. Business owners are also beginning to suggest that it may perhaps be more advisable to ease the restrictions to allow businesses to function. Nigeria recorded its first index case on February 27. President Muhammadu Buhari announced the lockdown of Ogun, Lagos and the FCT on March 29. States subsequently imposed dusk to dawn curfews and shut down their borders. 

But where is the trade off?  Should we cancel the lockdown and allow businesses to re-open, so people can keep their jobs and businesses can make profit? I do not buy the argument that businesses should re-open. We must avoid the mistake made by Mayor William Randolph Mills in Denver Colorado, United States, in 1918. Denver was shut down for five weeks during the Spanish Flu but as business owners began to mount pressure on the Mayor, arguing that the plague was under control, and that life should return to normal, Mayor Mills succumbed. It was a decision the city regretted. More people died – 8,000 in total. Nigeria must tread cautiously and avoid the error of imitation. It is better to be patient than to become patients.  The urge to protect or attract investments should not supersede the need to protect the people from themselves. 

On that score, African governments are often obsessed with the search for investments, even if many of these countries fail to provide the necessary infrastructure, enabling environment, and policy framework to support business, either local or foreign. This has been a major challenge for Nigeria too, but whatever efforts that may have been made to improve the environment have also been affected by the shocks and uncertainties occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic. Investors like to hedge their bets and minimize risks. Whereas it has been said that certain aspects of the economy stand to gain from the current situation, such as tech finance, telecommunications and agri-tech startups, the reality has been in the shape of capital flight, disruptions in the markets and distortions that could precipitate a long-lasting financial crisis. 

Let us remember that investments and businesses were the first to take the Corona Virus hit. From Asia to Europe to the United States and everywhere, stocks crashed. In the month of March alone, the Nigerian Stock Exchange lost over a trillion Naira. Portfolio investors dumped their investments and tried to convert their stakes into dollar, thus putting pressure on the Naira, the country’s national currency. The Naira depreciated quickly, forcing the Central Bank to close its multiple Forex windows and adjust prices – a euphemism for currency devaluation. The New York Stock Exchange at a point had to shut down. Stock Exchanges across the world, including Nigeria’s have since opted for remote trading. Trading has always occurred on the floor of the market each time markets opened, but Corona Virus has driven every floor broker into holes. Even foreign remittances from the Diaspora, a major source of support for African economies, have shrunk, and that may be the case in the short to medium term window. The challenge that governments face is how to turn the challenges of today into new opportunities for a re-set. Investors are bound to remain careful and watchful, especially in volatile sectors. There is no point jumping the gun. 

The effect of the disruption is perhaps best magnified by the crisis in the global oil industry. With the global industrial complex shut down, the oil industry faced a demand and supply crisis, resulting in a sharp drop in the spot price of crude oil. In the last few weeks, oil prices have fluctuated between $65/barrel in January to as low as $22/barrel by March 30, and up to $34/barrel by April 8, and about a week ago, the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) went into negative territory, selling at below a dollar per barrel due to a demand-supply-storage crisis. Brent Crude dropped to as low as $19/barrel only to improve slightly in the face of tensions in the Middle East between the United States and Iran. In March, an OPEC+ meeting to agree on production cuts in order to ensure a balance between demand and supply, and hence stabilize prices, ended in a stalemate, and a price war, as Russia opposed the move. By April, OPEC+ and non-OPEC members eventually agreed to a 10% production cut, but this was a case of too little, too late. 

Oil revenue accounts for about 80% of Nigeria’s foreign exchange revenue and provides the benchmark for its budget. Nigeria’s 2020 budget originally had a crude oil benchmark of $57/barrel, and a production output of between 1.7 million to 2.1 million barrels per day. With the crash in oil price, and the OPEC+ production cuts, Nigeria’s Budget 2020 was turned upside down; its production quota has been further reduced. The Federal Government has since revised the benchmark downwards to $30/barrel, and shaved off close to half of the budget. Nigeria may have to review its 2020 budget benchmark again, and the situation could get worse if uncertainties persist in the global oil market. Right now, Nigeria is already operating at a loss. At least one commentator has predicted that the country faces a Venezuela or Zimbabwe-like situation. Growth is stagnant. Inflation is rising: at 12.26%, there is no indication that the figure for April ending will be better. The energy crisis occasioned by COVID-19 should be a wake-up call for mono-cultural economies like Nigeria, and a pointer to the importance of diversification. As it is, Nigeria faces a revenue squeeze, a sovereign debt crisis and a liquidity crisis. Federation Accounts Allocations (FAAC) shared monthly between the Federal Government and the states have dropped from a projected N888.5 billion to N716.36 billion in January, and N647. 4 billion in February, with a slight rise to N780. 9 billion in March. The share for April and May/June could drop to as low as N400 billion, which is why the Federal Government is seeking foreign loans and the withdrawal of N150 billion from the Stabilization Fund component of the country’s Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF). The need for economic reform in Nigeria has never been more urgent than now. COVID-19 has exposed fault lines and vulnerabilities in Nigeria’s economy and its health and education sectors. 

The long and short of it is that the economics of Corona virus or Coronanomics, shows the interconnectedness of everything, that is the value chain of human existence from biology to economics, politics, technology, trade, investment, race, culture, identity and everything else. In the face of such infinitude, what is most required is leadership to help the people regain a sense of balance and restore all things that may have gone awry. Where leadership fails, the people’s misery is made worse, but the leadership also pays a price. When the New York Stock Market crashed in October 1929, Herbert Hoover (R) who had distinguished himself as a great mobiliser of relief efforts after World War 1 was the President of the United States. But his failure to manage the Great Depression, tactically and realistically, ruined his reputation.

In 1932, he lost the Presidential election to Franklin Delano Roosevelt (D). Roosevelt introduced the New Deal and an effective stimulus package that was backed by the Federal Government. This helped the United States to recover faster than other countries. Many countries were still battling with the Depression until World War II broke out in 1944. The quality of leadership made all the difference. Roosevelt was re-elected four times as President. Hoover is not remembered as a great American President. FDR died in office as one of America’s greatest. The cause of the Great Depression of 1929 -1944 may have been economic or financial, and the cause of COVID-19 may be biological, but there are clear areas of convergence in terms of economic and political impact. The fortunes and legacies of political leaders today may rise and fall with COVID-19 and its various fall-outs. 

The common denominator, so far, is the attempt by governments to protect and save lives and the economy. China is ahead in moving quickly from pandemic to economic recovery. The United States, UK, Canada, Russia, Japan, United Arab Emirates and other countries have announced different stimulus packages to cushion the effect on households and businesses. In Nigeria, the government has also introduced a number of measures and initiatives. But many questions have been raised about the quality of our government’s intervention and strategy. Nigeria has a reputation for doing the right thing the wrong way. We see that at play. There are yawning disparities in the delivery of Conditional Cash Transfers and doubts have been expressed about the enabling criteria and the absolute numbers. Nigeria is targeting 3.6 million households, and a total of 11. 6 million persons who are considered poor and vulnerable because they have less than N5, 000 in their bank accounts and cannot afford to buy up to a N100 worth of recharge cards. In a country of 200 million people, even if this cash transfer is well-managed, it would amount to a non-intervention. Food palliatives have also been announced in the form of release of 70, 000 metric tonnes of grains from the National Grains Reserve. Yet, a few days ago, the Oyo State Government openly rejected 1,800 bags of rice donated to the state by the Federal Government on the grounds that the rice was infested with weevils! 

Corona Virus confronts Nigeria with basic Economics and Sociology 101 lessons. Nigeria may well end up not as one of Ruchir Sharma’s BreakOut Nations (Norton and Company, 2012) but as a Break Down Nation. Nobody can predict the point at which the country’s leaders will begin to understand the difference between both. The relevant lessons lie in the nexus between politics, economy and leadership.      

 Late Abba Kyari

Aso Villa, Nigeria’s seat of presidential power is bereaved. On Friday, April 17, 2020, it recorded its first major casualty of the Corona Virus disease, in the person of the President’s Chief of Staff, Malam Abba Kyari. With Kyari’s death, Corona Virus has claimed its third high profile victim in Nigeria. Before Kyari was the former Managing Director of the Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC), Suleiman Achimugu and Ambassador Kabiru Rabiu, the first index case in Kano. As at the time of this writing, Nigeria has recorded a total of 21 COVID-19 deaths. But Kyari’s death resulting from complications related to COVID-19 has a different hue, and given the high office that he occupied, has understandably attracted more attention. I knew the late Chief of Staff from a distance. In my days as Chairman, Editorial Board/Editorial Page Editor of The Guardian newspapers, Abba Kyari was one of our regular contributors and he was quite a compelling contributor each time he submitted a copy. 

I do not remember ever rejecting any essay that he penned. His writing style was lucid, with every sentence in place.  His understanding of public affairs was unimpeachable. He had been a journalist, rising to the position of an Editor, he also had a background in sociology, law, public administration and banking and he had strong connections with persons in high places. His essays showed an astute understanding of Nigeria and its many problems. The only problem was that he wrote long essays and commentaries but he got published nonetheless, often in a serialized format, because of the beauty of his thoughts and the lucidity of his prose which had an irresistible Oxbridge accent. Graduates of Cambridge and Oxford are trained to write in a peculiar manner: they are strong on logic and lucidity. But I don’t recall ever meeting Abba Kyari in person. We always spoke on phone and exchanged intellectual banter and I can attest to the fact that he was one of the brightest ones from the North. 

The closest opportunity I would have had to meet him in person was two years ago. I had written an essay in this column and he called to protest that I didn’t have enough information. He argued the government’s position. I disagreed. He then told me to call him up whenever I was in Abuja, and he would be glad to continue the argument and give me relevant documents.  I eventually found myself in Abuja and I called him. But his line was busy. It was clear to me that as the President’s Chief of Staff, he had a very busy schedule and could be often unavailable. That passed. There were other phone calls from him subsequently. But the one that I can never forget was a phone call from him on my birthday last year. I missed the call because I was busy co-anchoring The Morning Show on Arise TV. He later sent a text message: “Good morning sir, to wish you a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY, didn’t know Segun Adeniyi is your senior!!! Best wishes always. - Abba Kyari.”  As soon as I got off the set, I called him back. He said he was in London and with the President. He just wanted to wish me a happy birthday and see if the President could also say hello to me. But he was no longer with the President, happy birthday to me all the same. I thought that was very kind of him.  

With Abba Kyari’s death, Nigeria has lost a hardworking, dedicated, public-spirited intellectual, a man who wanted the best for his country, a loyalist and a patriot. It is instructive that Abba Kyari contracted the COVID-19 disease while on national assignment as the head of a Presidential delegation to Germany to negotiate a subsisting and on-going, proposed intervention by Siemens in Nigeria’s electricity sector. From Germany, he went to Egypt and on his return he held meetings with government officials and state Governors. Many Nigerians, including Nigeria’s First Lady, Aisha Buhari, and the National Security Adviser, General Babagana Monguno have had cause to complain about Abba Kyari’s overwhelming influence as President Buhari’s Chief of Staff.  Others referred to him as Nigeria’s de facto President. When he tested positive for COVID-19, there were comments to the effect that this was a case of Karma, because he had no business going to Germany in the first place. From that moment, his enemies wished him dead. Those enemies must not jubilate. As Chikwe Ihekweazu, the CEO of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) tells us - Corona virus “is not Karma. It is a virus, an infection.” For the benefit of those who accused Kyari of hijacking Presidential powers, my understanding is that there is no way any staff of the President can be more powerful than the President. What exists in the corridors of power is the same laws of power that have dominated palaces and power centres for centuries. Those who have the eyes and ears of the man of power, and who enjoy access to him, are bound to be more influential than those who do not have that advantage. Such persons are bound to be targets of envy, palace intrigues, in-fighting, mischief and malice directed at them by other influence-and-access-seekers whose protests are usually borne out of selfish interests of their own rather than any concern for public good. 

Abba Kyari was probably the most influential Chief of Staff in Nigeria’s Presidential Villa since the return to civilian rule in 1999, comparable only, with essential differences, to Obasanjo’s General Abdullahi Mohammed, and Mike Oghiadhome during President Jonathan’s early years in office. General Mohammed was a strong Chief of Staff but he could not overshadow his boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo who was an equally capable man and a workaholic. Oghiadhome ran the Jonathan office with clock-work efficiency but he also could not upstage his boss because President Jonathan was a hands-on, healthy, hardworking boss. Those who accuse late COS Kyari of being a surrogate President may have been unfair to him. He only became so dominant because the President allowed him. Both Abba Kyari and President Buhari needed each other and I’d rather remember him as a loyal and efficient man who ran the engine room of the Presidency diligently and kept everything together from 2015 till the time of his passing. He was also very self-effacing. He didn’t hug the limelight. He did not try to outshine the Master. His influence was felt and ascribed, not something he himself shouted on the rooftops. He helped his boss to build bridges. He was a perfect courtier and a master of the game of entrenchment. Most of the people who condemn him merely base their impressions on hearsay. 

One of the first messages I received after Mallam Kyari’s death read: “Reuben, I now fully agree with you that some demons are in the Villa in Abuja.” The message was in reference to a controversial article I wrote in 2016 titled “The Spiritual Side of Aso Villa” (The Guardian, October 14, 2016)  in which I argued, based on experience and direct observation, that Nigeria’s Presidential Villa is a haunted place, overtaken by demons and magic, and that anyone who works or lives there is a potential victim. The biggest achievement for anyone who works in that Presidential Villa would be to leave the place alive, and not to lose a family member, contract a deadly disease, or to go back home with all kinds of life-long afflictions. My thesis was opposed by persons who had never spent a minute inside the place, and whose objections were based on their own untested beliefs. Very few persons worked in the Villa since 1999, without making a sacrifice. Officially, Abba Kyari died of COVID-19; because he was elderly, and had other health complications, he could not defeat the disease. But I will not argue with those who go beyond science to adduce metaphysics for his case. Abba Kyari probably became a target the moment President Muhammadu Buhari publicly identified him as the go-to person in his government. In the court of power, when a leader openly identifies a favourite, he or she becomes a target for all kinds of arrows – verbal, physical and spiritual. Abba Kyari never knew peace from that point onwards. He lived long in any case. He was 81, we are told. Some persons insist he was 67. It is only in Africa that simple things like dates of birth or death are matters of speculation and controversy.     

So, what next for President Buhari? He must now appoint a replacement for Abba Kyari, and in so doing, he would need someone with the same intellectual heft and skills. The stability of his administration would depend greatly on how well he manages this moment of transition in the Presidential Villa. In appointing a replacement, he should look beyond ethnicity and religion and appoint a seasoned, experienced and competent administrator, who also understands politics and power. That said, there are many lessons to be learnt from the passing of  Malam Abba Kyari and certain unanswered questions need to be addressed.  One, if money could save a life, Kyari would be alive today. He was treated in a private hospital which must have been more expensive than an isolation centre. After his death, he was flown from Lagos to Abuja. His burial was also handled by a specially deployed team wearing Personal Protective Equipment. At great risk to their own lives, some persons followed his corpse to the Defence Guest House where prayers were held and Gudu Cemetery in Abuja to witness his burial. The Presidency insists that the right protocols for the burial were followed, and that the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control gave necessary approvals. The ceremony as shown on television however raised concerns. Nobody observed social distancing and it looked like there were too many people at a COVID-19 burial. The protocols were observed more in the breach! There should be a standard burial protocol for all COVID-19 persons. Didn’t the Minister of Information say the other day that COVID-19 corpses will not be released to their families? The public will need further clarification on this score. There must not be different rules for different people. And why did Kyari have to relocate from Abuja to Lagos to get treated? Are there no standard isolation centres in Abuja that can accommodate a top official?

One big lesson from it all is that COVID-19 is not a respecter of persons. It is an unbiased, egalitarian, non-discriminatory, non-partisan disease. Both the rich and the poor have fallen by its sword. In the last few days, there has also been an attempt by key persons in the Presidential Task Force to demonize private hospitals treating COVID-19 Task Force members. Could that have been as a result of Abba Kyari’s condition? Could Abba Kyari have survived if he was treated at the Lagos state isolation centre where many cases have been successfully managed? In ordinary times, Abba Kyari would have been flown in an air ambulance to the best hospital in the world. But with the entire world shut down, and every country in isolation, countries are left with no other option than their own healthcare systems. African leaders have failed over the years to invest in the development of world-class health infrastructure. Their standard option is to embark on medical tourism to seek treatment for the smallest of ailments, including toothache. In the time of COVID-19, this has been impossible. Hopefully when all of this is over, COVID-19 will prove to be a wake up call and a call to action, forcing African leaders to upgrade healthcare systems from the primary to the tertiary level. 

When Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom tested positive for COVID-19 and began to have respiratory problems, he was treated at St. Thomas Hospital, a publicly-owned hospital, by NHS nurses and doctors. He survived and has since been discharged. In his subsequent broadcast, he had words of commendation and praise for the NHS staff that attended to him. Our public health facilities should be good enough to cater for both the poor and the privileged. In addition to that would be the need to take better care of our health care professionals. The same health workers whose salaries and allowances are often unpaid, and who are perpetually threatening to go on strike are now the ones leading Nigeria’s war against corona virus. Sometime last year, the Minister of Labour and Productivity boasted that Nigeria has more than enough doctors and any doctor that wanted to seek greener pastures overseas was free to do so. Today, every country of the world is acknowledging the great work being done by doctors and nurses and other medical staff on the frontline and calling for volunteers.  Only a healthy country can be a productive country. We can learn a lesson from the transparent leadership demonstrated by UK PM Boris Johnson. Why for example was the identity of the Lagos private Hospital where Malam Kyari was treated shrouded in mystery for so long? And why was a large gathering allowed at the internment of the late Chief of Staff? Every person at that burial in Abuja should be corona-shamed and asked to self-isolate for the next 14 days! 

Abba Kyari’s death should also provide an opportunity for introspection about life itself. Life is short. No man can live forever. Nobody knows tomorrow. For Abba Kyari, the journey ended suddenly. Before he left Abuja for Lagos, he had issued a statement in which he said he hoped to get back to his desk shortly. He never made it back to that desk. He has now been buried not in Aso Rock, but in Gudu, in a shallow grave. The coffin in which his body was conveyed to the cemetery was left behind and set ablaze. The Presidency says there will be no condolence visits. Death is the most certain end for all men. Those who are tempted to gloat over another man’s death should be reminded of their own mortality… May the Almighty comfort the family that Malam Kyari left behind and grant him Al Jannah Firdaus. 

Whenever man is confronted with a terrifying aspect of the world in which he lives, his natural instinct is to seek to understand the new phenomenon and bend it to his will. Pre-historic man opted for ritual as a means of mollifying and dominating his environment, but man soon moved from the age of rituals to the age of science, the advancement of which conferred on mankind enormous powers of manipulation and exploration, and the illusion of omnipotence. The paradox, however, is that the more man conquers his space, the more he is confronted with the realization that there is still a lot about the world that he is yet to know. Science has helped man, but it has also failed him, and each time man is confronted with yet another unknowable, he falls back on his primordial code of religious ritual. 

Man also tries to tame nature, still, Nature continues to show him that there is something else that is beyond man. The limits of science that man has experienced is a reminder of the fact that man with all his intelligence cannot alter the Order of Things and of Nature. It is therefore instructive that the current Corona Virus pestilence has been traced to man’s tampering with animals: eating all kinds of animals, from snakes to bats, selling them in the markets, both clean and unclean animals, against the order of nature. When man engineers and suffers for his own vulnerability, he simply attributes the occurrence to a mysterious force, and at that moment, he remembers the superiority of the Cosmos and of an Original force that he refers to as God, and worships through the vehicle of religion. 

This has been an aspect of COVID-19. Religion has played a prominent role in the spread and containment of the disease, as cause and effect, as explanation, as obstacle and as balm and risk, with clear indications of the conflict between religious freedom and public good.  It is noteworthy that shortly after the formal announcement of the incidence of COVID-19 in Wuhan, Hubei Province in China on December 31, 2019, the next major item on the Chinese calendar was a religious, cultural and traditional event, the Lunar New Year, the Festival of the Spring, preparations for which actually begins as early as December 23 or 24.  Contemporary attitudes to religion in China are mixed and ambivalent, but even those who insist that the Chinese Lunar New Year is strictly cultural – a holiday period, a time to re-unite with family - do not overlook its religious overtones: the spirituality of it as evidenced by the “send off of the Kitchen God”, praying to the Jade Emperor God (the Bai Tian Gong), ancestral worship, visits to temples, the firing of loud firecrackers, and the staging of the Dragon Dance to scare off evil spirits. China may proclaim state atheism as an ideology, but the people are deeply religious at heart. 

At the commencement of the COVID-19 pestilence, religion was the first victim. China promptly shut down many parts of the country. The Lunar New Year 2020 could not be celebrated. No temple was opened. No dance or festival could take place. Persons who had travelled from one part of the country to the other to observe the two-week Lunar New Year festivity were stranded either in transit or behind closed doors. For me, this was the first indication of the meeting point between COVID-19 and religion. Lunar Year 2020 – the Year of the Dog - is the dullest ever in more than 100 years. The people of China complied. They did not insist that the world will end if they did not send off “the Kitchen God.” Nobody protested that they must have “the Dragon Dance.” People moving beyond superstitions and obeying the call of science is important in the war against pandemics.

As the virus embarked on a trans-national journey, we encountered other scenarios elsewhere. South Korea was the next major stop for the virus after China. As COVID-19 sero-prevalence in that country jumped drastically, it was observed by the authorities that religion was a major obstacle. South Korea which had successfully combatted the SARS-Cov epidemic, with its highly sophisticated medical facilities, suddenly found itself unable to check COVID-19. The figures climbed daily and the highest numbers were reported from the Daegu region. Eventually, the explosion in numbers was traced to a Christian group known as the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a secretive religious group that is regarded as a cult. Even the Catholic Church called for a dissolution of this occultic church where members refuse to obey rules of social distancing, and hence endanger themselves and others. The 88-year old leader of the group, Lee Man-Hee and 11 others are likely to be charged for homicide and violation of the Infectious Disease and Control Act. Angry South Koreans want the church disbanded. But it was not only in South Korea that religion presented itself as a risk. 

In various parts of the world, believers have become slaves of the faiths that they profess, and ignored the warnings of health authorities and political leaders. On the Muslim side, believers, in search of COVID-19 protection, trooped to holy sites in Saudi Arabia to kiss the Kaaba and receive cure, protection and salvation. The Saudi government has since suspended pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina, and is considering cancelling this year’s Hajj.  Even the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem has been shut down. In Iran, an epicenter of outbreaks, home to major Shiite shrines, the authorities, after weeks of resistance and denial, have finally shut down shrines in Mashdad and Qum. Across the Middle East, Friday prayers have been cancelled. All major holy sites of the Islamic religion are on lockdown. In India, where the people love religious rites like Lollipop, the government cancelled the annual festival in honour of Lord Rama in Ayodha. In Iran and India, the people protested. They were not pleased at all. On the Christian side, churches across the Western world and elsewhere have been shut down. In Italy, another epicentre of the outbreak, and home of the Vatican, Catholic Mass has also since been cancelled.  Even the Pope now conducts virtual Mass. In one church in Italy, members of the congregation were asked to send family pictures. Family portraits replaced human beings in church. Corona Virus has changed the mode of worship and everything else. 

In Africa, the response of religious leaders to COVID-19 has been for the most part, ridiculous, if not absurd, with only a few voices of reason in-between. It is difficult to overlook the opportunism of these African religious leaders. The first pattern that emerged was that of many religious leaders, mostly Christian Pastors claiming that they had predicted the Corona Virus affliction or that they have an idea of what the cure would be. Nigerian clergymen – Prophet G.F. Adetuberu and Prophet T.B. Joshua were said to have predicted Corona Virus long before it happened, and their followers provided video evidence to that effect. The latter Prophet would later speak up when he predicted that COVID-19 will disappear after a heavy rainfall on March 27. Many Nigerians looked forward to that rainfall on March 27. People tend to believe pastors and astrologers in Africa. On March 27, there was no heavy rainfall, and the number of COVID-19 cases in Nigeria has increased geometrically since then! 

Other Pastors have also offered solutions. By February 5, a Ghanaian Pastor, Daniel Obinim, CEO of the International God’s Way Church launched a Corona Virus Anointing Oil which he claimed would cure the disease. A bottle of the oil costs 200 Ghanaian Cedis (about 37 US dollars) and according to him, it has been approved by the “heavenly department of the FDA”.  Obinim would later deny the claim. But there has been no denial yet from a Kenyan colleague of his, Climate Irungu Wiseman, founder of the Bishop Climate Ministries in Camberwell, London who is also selling a protection oil called Plagues Divine Protection Oil, at the rate of 91 pounds per bottle. Bishop Climate claims that his oil works and he has since sold over 1, 000 bottles. In Nigeria, Pastor Elijah Ayodele also says he has found a Corona cure: holy water and anointing oil- the only difference is that he is willing to give out his solution free of charge. It is not only African pastors that are guilty. Pastor Kenneth Copeland says he can blow Corona Virus away.  Pastor Jim Bakker, another US televangelist claims he can cure corona virus too. 

The effect is that across the world, the religious right has been defying stay-at-home restrictions to hold vigils and prayer sessions in the belief that Corona Virus can be cured through supernatural means. They have in many countries received the support of political leaders. In the last month, the Presidents of the United States, Uganda, Kenya, Ghana and South Africa have declared National Days of Prayer. The Vatican is not left out. On March 27, Pope Francis declared a Special Day of Prayer. He was joined by Catholics worldwide. Religious groups have also declared special days of fasting and prayers. This may be an expression of faith and social solidarity, but it has also prioritized superstition over science. It has also prompted many church-goers to reject the health guidelines on Corona virus and insist that they are covered by “the blood of Jesus”. But of all the claims by Pastors that I have read about, the most ridiculous would be that of a certain Nigerian Prophet, Dr. Goodheart Val Aloysius, the Metropolitan Senior Pastor of Father’s House International Church in Calabar. “My Father, My Father” as he is otherwise known, has called on the Nigerian government to gather all COVID-19 patients in the country together in one place and on Monday, April 13, he will pray for them and they will all be healed. He says if he fails, the government of Nigeria should ‘hang” him. It will be nice to see a rope around the neck of many of these Pastors who have been misleading people. The Federal Government should take him up on his offer, and get the hangman ready. 

So far, security agents have had cause to disperse worshippers who fail to obey the rules of social distancing, but perhaps the time has come for religious leaders to be arrested and punished. In Lagos, Nigeria, two Pastors have generated even more disturbing controversies by claiming to know the source and nature of the Virus. On March 27, Pastor Johnson Suleman of the Omega Fire Ministries was reported as having said that the virus is a “chemical weapon” invented by the Chinese to embarrass US President Donald Trump. He added that the disease is spread through testing and hence, Christians should not go for testing or use any Corona vaccine, lest they are turned into slaves under a New World Order. The dust had hardly settled on Apostle Suleman’s conspiracy theory when another famous Pastor, Chris Oyakhilome stretched the New World Order Theory further by announcing that there is a connection between 5G technology and Corona Virus and that the Nigerian Government is laying 5G fibre cables in Abuja and Lagos to promote an anti-Christ agenda. Whatever may be the purpose of these Pastors making all kinds of claims, they have not been helpful at all. Corona Virus has turned pastors into scientists, herbalists and historians. They should be called to order!

The bigger problem may well be that political leaders are also buying into the spiritual narrative and after days of lock-down in Nigeria, many state Governors are beginning to lower their guards. Last week, the Katsina state government announced that it had lifted the ban on Friday Jumaat prayers. In Bauchi state, the state Governor Bala Mohammed who tested positive for COVID-19, and later tested negative, went straight to the mosque for Friday prayers. The pictures did not show him observing social distancing! Some other states in fact more or less suspended the stay-at-home order. In Abia, Ebonyi, Ondo, Ekiti, and Niger states, Christians were told they could go to church for Easter. Ondo state has since done a volte-face after recording a second Corona case. In Abia, the excuse is that the state has no reported case of COVID-19.  Governor Okezie Ikpeazu in fact boasted that there will be no COVID-19 in the state because it is the only state in Nigeria that is mentioned in the Bible! Ikpeazu has a Ph. D in Biochemical Pharmacology. Corona Virus is beginning to make ordinarily intelligent people sound strange. On Friday, mosques in the Middle East were empty. On Sunday, the Pope conducted Easter Mass in an empty Cathedral. Africans are busy carrying received religion on their heads! If they were making original and informed statements, we would understand, but most of them are merely imitating the ultra-religious right in Europe and North America without making an effort to think.   

The duty of the religious community and its leaders is to support the people and lead them aright, not to use Holy Books to promote disease, murder and suicide. But let us reserve words of commendation for those religious leaders who have demonstrated leadership and commonsense.  Some churches and mosques, in the face of it all, have contributed in cash and kind to the war against COVID-19, in addition to the direct distribution of relief materials to aid the poor. I also salute those Nigerian Pastors who have refused to join the 5G conspiracy theory and any such other theories. In Rivers State, Governor Nyesom Wike, on Thursday, April 9, held a state-wide broadcast in which he relaxed restrictions on religious gatherings for Muslims and Christians in the state. The Catholic Church in the State opposed the Governor’s directive and asked its congregation to stay home and stay safe. That is leadership. No political leader should politicize COVID-19. Wike eventually reversed himself. At the appropriate time, there will be need to look at the heroes and villains of the Corona Virus season, surely most of the villains will be political and religious leaders who opted for myth, conspiracy, superstition and witchcraft. Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari has extended the lockdown order in Ogun, Lagos and the FCT. Ekiti state has also done so. Religious bodies must comply. 

Social distancing is a privilege. It means you live in a house large enough to practise it. Hand washing is a privilege too. It means you have access to running water.  Hand sanitisers are a privilege. It means you have money to buy them.  Lockdowns are a privilege. It means you can afford to be at home. Most of the ways to ward the Corona off are accessible only to the affluent. In essence, a disease that was spread by the rich as they flew around the globe will kill millions of the poor. All of us who are practising social distancing and have imposed a lock down on ourselves must appreciate how privileged we are. Many…won’t ve able to do any of this” – Jayshree Shukla, India, March 22, 2020. 

To the relief of many Nigerians who had been inundated with conspiracy theories about the status and whereabouts of President Muhammadu Buhari, and his level of involvement in the war against COVID-19, the President, obviously in response to pervasive public opinion addressed the nation in a televised broadcast on Sunday, March 29, more than a month after the first index case in Nigeria was reported. As at the time of that broadcast, the country already recorded 97 confirmed cases and 2 deaths. This was a jump of more than 400% in one week.  The numbers kept increasing. Fear gripped the land. Whereas Africa had significantly low numbers compared to the numbers of confirmed cases and deaths in Europe and the United States, African countries faced a similar exponential rise in COVID-19 figures. With the fragile health systems in Africa and shortage of medical personnel, many African countries were compelled to ramp up their COVID-19 containment measures. President Buhari’s broadcast could not have been more auspicious: a better late than never effort nonetheless.  He provided an outline of all the measures that had been introduced so far by the Nigerian Government to stem the tide of COVID-19. He also announced additional measures to protect livelihoods, businesses and the Nigerian economy. 

There were many grey areas in the President’s speech, but it was obvious that the government was going through a learning curve. How for example would Nigerians access the cash transfers that was promised? Schools across the nation are all on holiday, yet the President announced a school-feeding programme? Attempts have since been made to either modify or clarify some of the grey areas. The biggest of all the measures, and the most far-reaching is the announcement of a cessation of all movements in Lagos, and Ogun states and the Federal Capital Territory for an initial period of 14 days with effect from 11 pm on Monday, 30^th March 2020. “All citizens in these areas are to stay in their homes.” Food processing, distribution and retail companies, petroleum distribution and retail entities, power generation transmission and distribution companies, media workers, seaports and private security companies were exempted. The lock-down became effective as directed, except in Ogun State which asked to be allowed to commence its own lock-down on Friday, April 3 to allow the people to stock up on food and other items. President Buhari singled out Lagos, and the FCT because these are the two areas with the highest number of COVID-19 cases, and Ogun - because of its proximity to Lagos. As it turned out, state Governors also took the initiative to either declare a curfew in their states or shut down their borders. There has been a race to set up isolation centres across the various states. 

The lockdown in Nigeria is meant to enforce social distancing, and to check the spread of COVID-19, a measure that has been adopted globally to prevent persons from transmitting the disease. But here in Nigeria, the lock down has done more in terms of exposing and highlighting the character of our people, their circumstances, the attitude of state agents and the socio-political implications of the initiative. This has prompted calls for an African solution to COVID-19, and the description of social or physical distancing as an imported Western response. Africans by nature are communal; they are brought up to imbibe the philosophy of “ubuntu”: that is “I am, because we are”, and this is expressed in various forms: they eat together, indeed in many cultures, out of the same plate or bowl. They are happier when they are in a gathering either in the villages or in the cities. To ask an average African to lock himself up at home could be an inversion of his social reality. Even if it is possible for the mentally colonized middle and upper middle classes in Africa to observe social distancing at home and outside, it is near-impossible for the poor. The rich live in comfortable neighbourhoods, in flats, mansions or duplexes with small household units of not more than 4 or 5 persons, the poor live in slums and rural areas where they are huddled together in one room, or a room-and-parlour, in a six or eight-room building occupied by probably eight families, with each family having a minimum of six children, and all the tenants have at best access to just one communal bathroom, one toilet, and a well in the yard as source of water supply. In the rural areas, most families live inside a small hut. It is probably better to disperse such persons than to ask them to stay at home in the face of a communicable and deadly disease like COVID-19. 

Besides, many Africans earn their living on a daily basis. They are farmers or fishermen or traders who must go to work in the morning to survive. Sub-Saharan African countries do not have social safety nets, the types that exist in developed countries. In Nigeria, more than half of the population lives below the poverty line. Over 40 million persons are unemployed or underemployed. They have no access to food stamps or unemployment benefits. For these persons, life is a daily struggle. Even the employed are either under-paid and over-worked and their salaries and pensions are not paid as and when due. The other problem is that not many Africans believe in science: they are committed to traditional, superstitious beliefs: the animistic belief that there is no problem that cannot be solved spiritually through witchcraft, sorcery or the use of herbs and rituals, or the religious conviction that pastors and imams have the powers to solve any human problem. Getting such persons to respect science is a problem. In Osun State, for example, one Corona patient ran away from the isolation centre. He had to be hunted down and brought back by security agents. Poverty and ignorance complicate the people’s situation. The worst part is that the people do not trust their governments. This alienation between the people and their leaders makes the management of COVID-19 in Africa far more challenging. 

By the third day of the lock-down in Lagos State, the chickens had come home to roost. On the first day, there was relative calm as people generally tried to obey the stay-at-home order. On the second day, Lagosians had begun to complain, and rebel. I saw young men on the streets, playing football. Or simply walking up and down. On Wednesday, April 1, the Federal Government modified the directive by declaring that shops and supermarkets could be open from 10 am to 4 pm, and food markets from 10 am to 2 pm. It was a rather strange announcement because there was nothing said about how people are supposed to access the shops and supermarkets, since the ban on transportation was not lifted. What was meant to be a form of relief for the people ended up fuelling their anger. In parts of the country some state governments set up emergency food relief centres and embarked on the distribution of food items. Private individuals and non-governmental organisations also provided food and water in various places which in principle is a demonstration of public-spiritedness, but the relief efforts, public and private, were poorly co-ordinated. 

The poor fell over each other to collect packs of food or COVID food items, without observing social distancing. Government officials in Lagos State ended up receiving condemnation rather than praise. The people protested that they would rather be out on the streets to seek their own food and survival. One woman, a mother of four, disclosed on television that all she had left was N700, which is less than two dollars. The President announced cash transfers but we have only seen some government officials distributing raw cash. The Private Sector Coalition against COVID-19 and some individuals have raised as much as N19. 9 billion, but the poor people of Nigeria are more concerned about the risk of part of the funds ending up in the pockets of government officials.

Many Nigerians remain in denial, both rich and poor. They don’t understand why they should be told to stay at home or maintain social distance. In Cross River State, the Governor has made the wearing of facial masks compulsory for every one in the state, with penalties for disobedience. It is a way of forcing the people to realise that in these unusual times, health safety guidelines must be obeyed. The people’s reluctance to do so, has brought them in conflict with the security agencies. On Friday, April 3, a strong-headed Muslim cleric decided to hold evening prayers in Agege, Lagos in violation of the lockdown order. The worshippers were dispersed by security agents. Market women who did not obey the rules have also been forced to comply. On Sunday, April 5, the police arrested a celebrity actress and her husband for staging a crowded house party in Lagos. They have been charged to court and convicted. 

The only problem here is the high-handedness of the security agents. Rather than help the people through persuasion and advice, they have for the most part resorted to force. In Warri, Delta State, a soldier shot and killed a man who allegedly refused to stop at a checkpoint when he was flagged down. In Lagos, two soldiers in a recorded video that went viral, threatened to rape women and infect them with HIV for daring to challenge the military. In Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, a Police Sergeant assaulted and broke the arm of a medical doctor who insisted he was out and about on essential duty. The situation is the same in Uganda where security forces have been accused of excessive use of force. The best way to save the people from themselves is not by killing or maiming them. African governments must resist the temptation to use the excuse of COVID-19 to further dehumanize the people. In Botswana, however, where a 28-day lockdown has been declared, the people are complying without the security forces having to enforce the order. Different scenarios in Africa depending on the level of trust between the state and the people and the level of engagement. What is important is that the enforcement of lockdowns must be strictly within the ambit of the enabling laws. 

State authorities must be careful not to ignite a social crisis that may result in riots and mass revolt. Rather than take advantage of the people, because of the lockdown, security agencies should pay more attention to a likely rise in crime and social unease. One woman was on television the other day to lament that someone stole her pot of soup in the communal building where she lives. She had left the kitchen briefly. By the time she returned, her pot of soup had vanished! That is how it starts. For as long as the lockdown persists, without sustainable support from government, people will steal food and other things in order to survive. African leaders may end up paying a bigger price for neglecting their people over the years and for failing to build strong institutions. 

Steps should also be taken to stem the tide of infodemic, that is the alarming spread of misinformation. On Saturday, while taking notes for this commentary, I was bombarded with stories about how Corona Virus is linked to the 5G communication technology. I learnt that 5G masts were already being destroyed in the UK by angry citizens. Before I could investigate this any further, I received an international call from a very jovial friend:

“My brother,” he said. “I greet you Coronally, Coronally”. 

“Ore, compliments of the Corona season oh,” I responded. 

“A ku lockdown oh”

“I hope you are good at your end. Please keep safe.” 

Then all of a sudden I thought I heard something that sounded like a cough at the other end. I didn’t know when I threw my phone away on the bed. I had just read about 5G and the internet of things (IOT) and the likelihood of a radiation tsunami. What if it is true as alleged that viruses can travel electronically? 

“E ma wa ko ba mi jare? If you know you have a cough, or you are sneezing, don’t call me on phone! It is not good to take chances with this heartless COVID-19,” I muttered.  

The truth has since been told about 5G by those who should know. It is not the anti-Christ. It is not the Corona Virus. People are just so hysterical, one of the ways they try to cope is to just make up stories perhaps to manage the terror of time and uncertainty. Some Nigerians insist for example, that Nigeria should not seek the assistance of Chinese medical experts or accept any donations of test kits or ventilators from any foreign source. They think there may be a covert attempt to turn Nigerians into guinea pigs. After all, two French doctors – Jean-Paul Mira and Camille Locht - openly identified Africa as the best testing ground for possible COVID-19 drugs. Race is a worrisome dimension of the Corona Virus debate. 

So is the spike in cases of domestic violence and gender-based abuse. Lockdowns ordinarily should strengthen filial relationships especially between husbands and wives, but the opposite has been reported in France, the UK, Spain, the United States… and even here in Nigeria. Self-isolation and social distancing seem to be putting all relationships on trial. Even commercial sex workers have registered their displeasure! On April 1, we forgot to play pranks. On Palm Sunday, the churches opted for elegies, instead of odes. Our world is unravelling.