How exactly is the lockdown helping to halt the spread of
coronavirus in Nigeria? Or put another way, how is the Buhari regime which
announced the lockdown in three locations, Lagos, Ogun and the Federal Capital
Territory (FCT), ensuring that the measure unleashed is at least achieving a
reasonable percentage of the purpose for which it was declared?
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| *Buhari |
Has there been any thorough audit of the exercise? Who is
also undertaking such an assessment in the various states that are equally on
lockdown? What is the level of compliance at the various places and what
percentage of the anticipated gains has so far been achieved?
One may never get a coherent answer. That is the problem a people must learn to
live with when they are stuck with a regime that appears to derive some kind of
strange animation from maintaining an icy distance from the people it claims to
be governing, a leadership that seems to have become incurably estranged from the
people, their problems and feelings, and appears to be trapped in abject lack of
the capacity to muster any empathy and fellow-feeling either when speaking to the
populace or taking actions that are sure to harshly affect their lives.
What discerning Nigerians see out there are mere
perfunctory and aimless exercises by a regime that appears to be mainly
interested in demonstrating that it is also doing or has done something. Whether
the measures undertaken eventually achieve the desired results or not do not
seem to be among the things that bother it. What appears to matter only is that
the government’s megaphones are now armed with “strong evidences” of some
actions undertaken by the regime and are using them to torment the ears of a terribly
famished and frustrated populace by broadcasting them on rooftops and equally deploying
them to great effects to launch ferocious attacks on those who try to call
attention to the howling inadequacies and failures of the authorities.
Despite locking down Lagos, Ogun, the FCT and some other states
for some weeks now, the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 is still rising. Due
to the lockdown, the people cannot go out to work to earn a living in one of
the harshest economies in the world, but is that all that is required to be done
to combat the virus? What sincere efforts are being deployed to cushion the
effects of the stay-at-home order so that people who are prevented from working
to earn a living are not allowed to die of hunger? Has the government tried to
identify with the people’s suffering in order to attract sufficient sympathy and
cooperation from them for its strategy for halting the spread of the virus? Is
the movement-restriction order, which most of the populace may just be seeing as
punitive, helping to achieve the required “social distancing” which has been
proved to be the most effective measure for the containment of coronavirus?
As I move about, I see groups of people in large numbers, gathered
here and there, sitting or standing very close to each other, holding lively
discussions – often almost speaking into each other’s face. From the few words
you could pick from their discussions, you would see immediately that
government and what is widely perceived as its uncaring nature is usually the
topic of discourse. Obviously, these people
are tired, hungry and angry. These gatherings, therefore, have become some kind
of tranquilizer, a way of relieving tensions and removing attention from the biting
problems associated with the action of a government they believe merely emerged
from its seclusion, imposed a lockdown on them, and returned to its hideout
without caring about the searing effects of the policy.
But, these gatherings, sadly, only serve to sabotage the
very purpose of the restriction of movements and stay-at-home order. How many
of the people attend these gatherings uninfected, but go home eventually
carrying the virus? So, what then are we achieving? Is it just to keep the people
starving at home so that the rest of the world can see that the Nigerian government
is also doing something to contain the spread of the virus, even though all the
efforts being clumsily and aimlessly undertaken appear like pouring water in a
basket?
I have been saying it for some years now that Nigeria presents
the best picture of how a country could look like and exist in the absence of any
form of government. The average Nigerian has learnt to exist without expecting anything
good, edifying or exciting happening to remind him about the existence of the government.
Nigerians have learnt to endure the bad roads and dilapidated public
infrastructures like hospitals and schools. In most cases, they help themselves by making
the roads that lead to their homes, providing potable water for themselves and
generating their own electric power – by spending so much on petrol daily and
polluting the atmosphere with ear-splitting noise and thick, harmful smokes.
Even security which should be the most basic obligation any government owes its
people since it controls the instruments of force and violence is almost
non-existent. People are left at the mercy of criminals and bandits. So, in
order to safeguard their lives, Nigerians spend so much to arrange for their
own security.
Many Nigerians, therefore, have grown to see government as
some irrelevant, indifferent or even a perennially absent entity. Government
only compels them to remember that it exists when it constitutes a nuisance to
their lives like coming to extract taxes from them without giving anything beneficial
in return or demolishing structures and displacing many people who have managed
to find shelters for themselves in the absence of any viable housing policies
for the masses, or even like the imposition of a movement-restriction order on the people and callously abandoning them to
their fate as is currently being experienced in the country.
The people feel that their leaders are too immersed in
their business of primitive accumulations to have any time left to seek to make
them happy or try to attract their friendship and sympathy. And so, even though
the restrictions are inevitable, the people are not able to buy into it. And
so, the objective is largely defeated.
Even the government that is preaching “social distancing”
is seen everywhere often flagrantly observing it in the breach. For instance, shortly
after the Bauchi State Governor, Mr. Bala Mohammed, was released from isolation
following his recovery from Covid-19, pictures of an event he featured in were
released and people were scandalized that they should convoke such a crowd
where people interacted very closely and “social distancing” requirements were flouted
with outrageous impunity.
All over the
country, the people are witnessing top government functionaries brazenly failing
to lead by example by obeying the very restrictions they had imposed to check
the spread of the virus. As they do this, they deemphasize the importance and seriousness
of those measures before the people. The worst example was egregiously
advertised during the recent burial of the late Chief of Staff to the President,
Mr. Abba Kyari. First, the corpse was flown from Lagos to Abuja, thereby endangering
the lives of those who were obligated to convey and receive it. The burial was
aired on television and the crowd was not, in my estimation, less than 200.
This was a brazen violation of the extant crowd regulation policy of the government
which stipulates that no gathering should exceed 20 people. Every requirement about
“social distancing” was rudely flouted with utmost impunity. It was as if there
was a deliberate effort to spread the coronavirus. Many Nigerians must have
wondered at the kind of government we have that honours the dead at the expense
of the safety of the living, and makes a law with one hand only to flout it
with the other?
Has anybody seen where the often very miserable palliatives
are shared to hungry Nigerians? Because the people are conscious of the fact
that what is being distributed are not always enough for everyone to get some
bit, the fight in the usually intimidating crowd can only fill any decent
person with great disgust and dread. And the videos of these shameful displays are
all over the social media embarrassing and further diminishing Nigeria before
the rest of the world.
So, it is not possible to, for once, treat “ordinary”
Nigerians like human beings, undertake the distribution of these food items a
little more decently and avoid the sorry spectacle of people fiercely fighting,
wounding themselves and falling over each other to get the items being thrown
at them by officials as though they were animals?
How many healthy people come for those food items only to go
home infected with coronavirus? So, why the lockdown if the sharing of
palliatives only help to further spread the virus? Unless the government
undertakes a comprehensive audit of the gains of the lockdown, adopts a more
creative and humane approach to its implementation, people will only be kept at
home dying of hunger while the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 keeps increasing.
Instead of assessing the gains of the four weeks people have already endured
and design a better way of achieving the desired results, what we are hearing
is that the president and governors have resolved to impose another two weeks
of restrictions!
I will keep hoping that there is nothing in the corridors
of power that makes those there incapable of realizing when they have become
confused, overwhelmed and totally bereft of any workable ideas!
So far, the government has got so much money from
donations from Nigeria and abroad. It is not enough to just sit somewhere in
Abuja and announce the billions you claim to have shared out to people. Please,
come down from your high horse, face reality and do the right thing. You are merely
preparing a time bomb by keeping people at home and refusing to financially
empower them so they can feed themselves and their families. If other
countries, even in Africa, can successfully do it, Nigeria can. Let the cash
disbursements go round. Let the food items reach everyone that is in need of
them.
If leaders hope to succeed, they must strive to connect
with the people and see them as human beings who have genuine needs and
feelings, and not as mere statistics. Please, this is the 21st Century! This
also is not an election season, so let all the propaganda end. They neither
change the price of fish in the market nor fill the stomach of the starving. They
are simply exasperating and nauseating. The Buhari regime should endeavour to puncture
by practical actions the growing impression that it is helplessly overwhelmed. That
is, if it is not!
*Ugocukwu Ejinkeonye is a Columnist and Member, Editorial Board, Daily Independent newspapers. His column appears every Monday on the back page of the paper. (scruples2006@yahoo.com; @ugowrite.)
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