Our pre-existing conditions
Times like these, some people say, are ill-suited for quarrels or trading blames. Allow leaders to lead us through these difficult times without quarrels or dissipating valuable energy. Let us unite and find solutions. We can pick up our differences and party cards where we left them before this pandemic hit us. If we have […]
Times like these, some people say, are ill-suited for quarrels or trading blames. Allow leaders to lead us through these difficult times without quarrels or dissipating valuable energy. Let us unite and find solutions. We can pick up our differences and party cards where we left them before this pandemic hit us. If we have to raise voices, they say, raise them in support of what governments are doing. Otherwise, stay safe, stay at home, and stay quiet.
What nonsense! If ever there is a time to say what went wrong with the nation and what is being done wrong, it is now. There is no broken line between how we got here and where we are headed. Like the COVID-19 pandemic, pre-existing conditions in humans are important to identify and act upon. Some of these conditions are ideal grounds for the virus to take roots and casualties.
No nation in the world was prepared for COVID-19. This is a fair and factual statement. It is also where most similarities the world over stop. Understanding these conditions is useful in dealing with the pandemic, but even more useful is the possibility this understanding will provide a useful basis for addressing our post-COVID 19 world. In our case, these will be among the most prominent of our pre-existing conditions that will determine if we survive and how they shape our post-COVID world:
- Extreme poverty
Poverty is an ideal setting for a pandemic that requires massive resources to fight it. Poor people need water (ideally, clean), soap, disinfectants and sanitisers, masks, relatively clean environment and settings that allow social distancing to protect themselves. When they are locked down and therefore unable to meet basic daily needs like food or medication, they cannot survive without support. When the poor cannot feed or physically protect themselves from a virus that is easy to spread, it is impossible to enforce any protective measure that requires money from people who do not have it, and this compels them to either starve or submit to the virus. Extreme poverty is the perfect setting for this virus to thrive. It is also the setting for most of our problems. In the short term, we have to find a way to protect a large and very poor population that is not in a position to protect itself. In the long term, the nation needs to target the fight against widespread and extreme poverty as a war that must be won if the nation is to survive at all.
- Social and class divisions
Nigeria’s population has grown at about the same rate as the collapse of the middle class. The vast majority of Nigerians live on, or below subsistence levels, and opportunities for movement up are evaporating as productive and distributive activities shrink by the day. Ethnic, religious and regional factors have hindered the emergence of a consciousness consistent with the realities of the existence of this class, but a crisis that exposes this class to all its vulnerabilities could develop quickly around a resentment of an elite that has failed to prepare the nation for even the mildest crisis by stealing its resources. A tiny middle class exists precariously, living a largely parasitic life and surviving on an economic system and processes that yield benefits from widespread and endemic corruption. This class shares the values of the elite class, but is tied up by the sheer size of the poor classes with which it shares a lot in common.
There is a small class of the super rich which runs the state and the private economic assets that are created and maintained through plunder of state resources. This class manipulates weaknesses of the poorer classes and institutions of the state, and is characterised by intense turbulence and mutation which however, do not threaten its hold on power or basic interests.
COVID-19 has affected relations between classes in interesting terms. On the one hand, it has exposed the results of long, systemic and damaging plunder of state resources and their privatisation by the elite. Nigerians now understand why the elite made overseas medical treatment a routine ritual of its membership: they have invested nothing in the Nigerian medical sector. On the other hand, it has exposed the humanness of this rapacious elite which can steal national resources at will and travel all over the world, contract and bring home strange foreign ailments, and are locked out from their usual sources of medical relief by countries that keep their stolen funds.
Now a virus has locked down the rich and the poor together, and is serving as a catalyst for the fastest development of class consciousness. It is very likely that the present ruling class will be a major casualty of this virus in more ways than is realised. Poor Nigerians will be severely angered that they cannot get rested or treated or even have bodies disposed of if this pandemic takes a bigger toll on the population. Certainly, a post-COVIC-19 Nigeria, if it survives the certainty of a major class-related conflict, will be one in which resources will be protected with greater vigilance, and leadership will be held to account with more vigorous scrutiny. In the meantime, the nation should prepare for leadership that will run away from the people, and a state that has very little outside the huge, protected resources of the elite. Resources from the global community which will further mortgage the future may be available, but a nation such as ours which is basically broke and scandalously profligate will have to stand in line a long time to be attended to.
- Quality of leadership
The nation’s poor stock of quality of leadership is being exposed in a very dangerous manner. President Buhari has reinforced the perception that he sees his leadership as a great favour to Nigerians, and nothing, not even the biggest disaster that could befall this nation will move him to raise his levels of empathy for the plight of the people, his minimalist approach to governance or the cultivated distance he has created between him and the people. In the face of a crisis that threatens to expose his weaknesses as a leader, he has lowered his effectiveness and visibility. He is not rallying governors to adopt policies that could mitigate incoherent approaches. He is not leading a determined national search for resources to deploy to key areas in this fight.
President Buhari is content to push forward Ministers who said a few weeks ago that Nigeria is ready for this virus, and another who says we have opened our account as the leading beggar-nation, and a committee which inspires the lowest levels of confidence among Nigerians as his response to this crisis. He is not engaging influential clerics, leaders of civil society and other respected Nigerians to support the awareness campaign against the pandemic, or reduce hostility against leadership at all levels. Governors are choosing what levels of contempt to deploy against the people. A select few political cronies will rake in billions more from palliatives. The poor will get more angry at leadership.
Our leaders will make a terrible mistake if they assume that this popular discontent too shall pass.
If any good will come out of COVID-19, it may well be that it would sweep away the liability that Nigerians routinely shoulder in the name of its leaders in future.