COVID-19 AND LESSONS TO BE LEARNED...(5)

 NEW WAYS OF GREETING (Seriously, must we shake hands?): hand shaking has been a formal way of greeting and has reportedly been with us for over 2,000 years. However, findings that the virus can be contracted by us touching our mouth eyes and nose and with most people unable to long resist urges to touch their faces, has led to the advisory against shaking of hands as a form of greeting. In a 2014 article in DW Magazine, it was reported that several studies have shown that handshakes are a very common way of transmitting diseases. In the same article, it was reported that only about two-thirds of men wash their hands after using public restrooms. In Nigeria, where men frequently urinate on the sides of the road, which of course have no hand washing facilities, the figure will be significantly higher. 

By the time this pandemic is finally over, some of us might have to reexamine the culture of hand shaking as a form of greeting.

IMPROVING THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM:successive governments both at the State and Federal levels, have paid scant attention to truly developing Nigeria’s healthcare infrastructure and the manpower taking care of the health of the citizens. With most public officials flying out of the country at the merest hint of bodily discomfort, it is no wonder that the healthcare infrastructure and system have deteriorated till the hospitals became mere consulting clinics. Healthcare providers are underpaid, overworked and unappreciated and most of them have therefore left Nigeria for other shores where they are better paid and where facilities are much better provided for their work. 

The need of most countries to contain the spread of Covid-19 has led to closure of borders and the airspace in most countries and perhaps for the first time in decades, some of those at the helms of the country’s affairs are now confronted with the decrepit healthcare system their criminally selfish neglect has ‘bequeathed’ to the country. More than any other thing in recent history, Covid-19 presents Nigeria’s leaders at all levels, with a chance to recalibrate and devote more funds and attention to the health sector. Nigeria has consistently fallen very short of the 2001 African Union Countries’ 15% of annual budget target and the 15% of annual budget recommendation of the World Health Organisation (WHO) also of the same year.

Percentages allocated to health have not risen up to 6% of the total annual budgets in spite of Nigeria’s commitment to follow the African Union Countries’ declaration of 15% ironically made in the FCT in 2001. According to Budgit, combined budgetary allocations to education and health in the 2020 Appropriation Act came to just about 11% of the total budget (and that was before the budget was revised with health and education suffering drastic cuts). And even of the dismal 4.14% which came to N427.3B allocated to health for the year, only about N46.48 Billion is for capital expenditure, the bigger chunk goes to recurrent expenditure. The Cable’s report of November 7, 2019 titled Critical Issues on FG’s 2020 healthcare budget written by Joshua Olufemi gives graphic details of the dire straits Nigeria’s healthcare sector is in.

If the account in the article does not give you pause on the importance or lack of importance, attached to the development of our health sector by successive governments in Nigeria, perhaps the fact that the UK’s National Health Service (NHS)’s annual budget according to Dr. Ola Brown in her book titled Fixing Healthcare in Nigeria, is equivalent to the Nigeria’s federal health budget for 200 years will. In case the significance of the multiple of years by which UK’s NHS budget size versus Nigeria’s budget size eluded you, UK has a population of 60 million people while Nigeria’s estimated population is at least 3 times that of the UK.

Though one wants to have the hope that the closure of airspaces and the consequent inability of Nigeria’s public officials to travel during this period will make them see the need to develop both the healthcare infrastructure and the workers in the healthcare sector in the country, the recent cut by 25% in the capital allocation to the Ministry of Health and the 42% cut in the allocation for primary health care in the 2020 revised budget indicate otherwise.     

COVID-19 AND LESSONS TO BE LEARNED...(4)

NIMC, DEVELOPING A STRUCTURE: IMPORTANCE OF FOR HELPING CITIZENS: The attempts by the governments both at the State and Federal levels to provide some sorts of palliatives to people who mostly live on their daily incomes during the lockdown has laid very bare and brought into very sharp focus, the lack of any real structure in the country which could be utilised to effectively get the palliatives to people who were in dire need of them.

 

Though the Federal government claimed to have a register of about 2.6 million households who have been benefitting from the monthly N5,000 stipend under the Nigerian Social Investment Program (NSIP) previously supervised by the office of the Vice President and later transferred to the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, there have been a lot of questions of how the beneficiaries of the NSIP were determined and the transparency of the distribution. In any case, however those beneficiaries were determined, the fact is that 2.6 million households or the increment by one million recently directed by the president amount to very tiny drops in an ocean of poor Nigerians, more than 40% of whom, according to the latest statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics reportedly live in extreme poverty.

 

The importance of the role and tasks given to the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) by the NIMC Act which was supposed to have come into effect in July of 2007 comes into very sharp focus during this period. The NIMC has as part of its functions:

Ø  The creation, management, maintenance and operation of a national identity database created under Section 14 of the NIMC Act of 2007: Section 5(a);

Ø  The registration of all Nigerian citizens into the National database: Section 5(b); registration of non-Nigerian citizens lawfully resident in Nigeria: Section 5(c);

Ø  The issuance of a general multi-purpose card to persons registered under Section 5 (a) & (b) above: Section 5(d); and

Ø  The assignation of unique National Identification Numbers (NIN) to persons registered: Section 5(f).  

 

By the provision of Section 1(1)(r)  of the Mandatory Use of the National Identification Number Regulations of 2017 made pursuant to Sections 27 & 31 of the NIMC Act of 2007, the NIN is a condition precedent to eligibility and documentation for social welfare services by the government and other non-governmental agencies. However, though as already mentioned, the NIMC Act was supposed to have come into effect since May 2007 after it was signed into law, it was not launched until August 2014, more than 7 years later, by then President Goodluck Jonathan.

 

According to Guardian newspaper’s Saturday Magazine report of November 9, 2019, titled National Identity Card: Another bumpy road to building National Database, as at 2016, less than 1% of eligible Nigerians had been registered and even though the target of the NIMC back in 2016 was to have had over 100 million unique records in its central database in order to commence the enforcement of mandatory use of the NIN for certain services and transactions, as at November 9, 2019, just about 38 million people or 19% had been enrolled, a figure, just over one third below the target of the NIMC. Officials of the NIMC have, according to the earlier mentioned Guardian report, blamed their failure to effectively carry out NIMC’s mandates under the Act on paucity of funds. NIMC’s budget in the initial 2020 budget was N5.006Billion (N5,006,294,500) out of which recurrent expenditure is a whopping N4,662,530,146 while capital expenditure is a mere N345,764,354, whereas in an article on biometricupdate.com of September 5, 2019 titled Nigeria to receive $433M from World Bank for biometric national ID registration, an estimate of N50 Billion or $140 Million per annum was given for registration of all Nigerians. Though the article did not state how many Nigerians this amount is to register on an annual basis and what exactly the N50M figure covers, the DG of NIMC according to a recent report, stated recently that the Commission enrolls about 5.1 million people on an annual basis. This pandemic and the inability to effectively distribute palliative materials to those who really need them should tell this government how important it is for the government to put the structure in place for it.

 

Besides using the National Identity database for social welfare programs, the database when it starts running will also be of very great importance as it relates to apprehending criminals in the country and in the determination of our population.  It can more accurately tell us our number in the country and how many people live in the different parts of the country. Of course when we know our numbers, we can plan better and know which area needs what, rather than the haphazard planning and uneven developments we currently have. The DG of NIMC, Mr Aliyu Aziz was recently quoted to have said during a Zoom meeting that over 100 million Nigerians, especially as can be guessed, the poorest and most vulnerable; women and girls, do not have any form of identity whatsoever. The importance of having these figures can never be over-emphasised. As already mentioned, the NIN can also help to track criminals. Section 1(1)(x) requires the NIN for the purchase and registration of SIM cards and other communication devices and since existing phone lines are also required to be linked with the NIN in much the same way our Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) were linked to all our bank accounts, however many they were, the proposal mulled recently by the Communication Ministry of limiting SIM cards to three per person would be unnecessary. The most important thing to be done for this to work is to ensure no SIM card is sold or issued without registration and linking with the NIN. Any telecommunication company that flouts this provision of the law should be severely sanctioned. Once this is done, it will become so much easier to trace the persons behind fraudulent activities and other criminal acts. Enrolment of Nigerians and foreign residents should also be accelerated and both the corruption and the paucity of funds that have stalled it should be tackled. It is hoped that the liberalization of the registration process which will involve other agencies and private sector participants to enroll Nigerians, and to be made possible by the financial support from the World Bank with the sum of $433M will aggressively scale up enrolment of people across the country as intended. The Steering Committee for the Nigeria Digital Identity for Development Ecosystem, also recently inaugurated and to be chaired by the Secretary to the Federal government, Mr. Boss Mustapha, which has among others, the task of fast-tracking the implementation of the Strategic Roadmap for accelerating digital identity development for Nigeria it is hoped, will contribute towards actually accelerating enrollment of Nigerians and non-Nigerians resident in Nigeria into the National database. It is time for us as a country and a people to start prioritizing the truly important things.

 

CBN'S GLOBAL STANDING INSTRUCTION (GSI) AND LOAN RECOVERY IN NIGERIA

After the CBN in July 2019, directed Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) have a Loan to deposit ratio (LDR) of 60% or risk the CBN retaining an amount equivalent to 50% of the shortfall in the LDR, and even going a step further to, in the last quarter of 2019, raise the LDR to 65%, I got worried about the safety of depositors’ funds given the high rate of non-performing loans (NPLs) in the banking sector.

The CBN had over time, tried to put in place some safety measures against ballooning NPLs like the establishment of the Credit Risk Management System (CRMS) or Credit Bureau, given legal backing by Sections 28 & 52 of the CBN Act (as amended). The CRMS, now web-enabled, allow banks and other stakeholders to dial directly into the CRMS database for the purpose of rendering statutory returns or conducting status enquiries on borrowers. The CBN had also always consistently stressed to banks the importance of strengthening their risk management practices.

It can be argued that banks’ obligation under the CBN Act to update their credits on a monthly basis and to make status enquiry on any intending borrower to determine their eligibility or otherwise has made some difference to the quantum of NPLs in the industry. The CBN’s Financial Stability Report of 2018 reported an improvement in NPLs of Domestic Systematically Important Banks (D-SIBs), from 11.31% at end of June 2018 to 9.82% at end of December 2018. The D-SIBs, which were 7 in number in 2018 accounted for 63.80% of the industry total assets of N35.10Tn, 65.23% of the industry total deposit of N21.75Tn and 66% of the industry total loans of N15.34Tn.

While NPLs as at Q4 of 2018 stood at N1.792Tn equal to 11.67% of gross loans (N15,353,758,941,686.20), at end of December 2019, the percentage of NPLs had reduced to 6.03% of gross loans of N17.563Tn according to the Selected Banking Sector data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in March 2020. 

Still in a bid to ensure borrowers pay what they owe financial institutions in the country and reduce NPLs, as recently as the 16^th of June 2020, the CRC Credit Bureau, one of the 3 licensed credit Bureaus in Nigeria, reportedly launched its data submission platform to allow lenders to provide real time credit information about borrowers.

The Asset Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON) had initially been created in 2010 by the AMCON Act of 2010 which was amended twice; in 2015 and 2019 in order to resolve the issue of NPLs in eligible financial institutions. How successful AMCON has been over the years is a subject of debate. According to the 2018 Financial Stability Report earlier mentioned, the carrying value of AMCON’s liabilities increased from N4.53Tn at end of June 2018 to N5.43Tn at end of December 2018 due to its investment of N895.45Bn in Polaris Bank. AMCON’s total recoveries from asset sales and credit repayments at end of December came to N759.058Bn. The 2019 amendments to the AMCON Act in fact contained several sections which allows AMCON to obtain ex-parte Orders of Court to put debtors’ accounts under surveillance, or to get access to devices which will reveal where a debtor keeps his/her funds: Section 6(1)(ua). A newly inserted Section 6(6) mandates AMCON to furnish governments Ministries, Agencies and departments (MDAs) with the name of recalcitrant debtors so as either to stop them from being given government contracts or to stop them from being paid if they had already been awarded contracts.

On Tuesday the 14^th of July 2020, the CBN released Guidelines on Global Standing Instructions (GSI) (Individuals) targeted at enhancing loan recovery in the banking sector. GSI will allow banks to debit debtors’ eligible accounts across different banks  A debtor who has an overdue loan with Bank A can thus with the aid of GSI, have his/her funded accounts in Banks B, C & D debited with amount equivalent to his/her indebtedness (principal sum and interest thereon) to Bank A.

Article 2.0. of the GSI Guidelines lists accounts which qualify for GSI to include domiciliary accounts, investment/deposit accounts and electronic wallets and joint accounts, apart from the traditional savings and current accounts that most people have. By Article 3.2.1., borrowers are to execute GSI mandates (for their banks or lenders) either in hard copy or digital form. All the borrowers’ accounts are also expected to be linked to his/her Bank Verification Number (BVN) and any of his/her account which qualifies for GSI found not to be so linked shall be watch-listed.

The mandate which would have been signed by a borrower before being given loan by a Participating Financial Institution (PFI) will enable a PFI to issue a GSI trigger which will in turn allow the borrower’s eligible accounts across PFIs to debit the borrower’s account(s) without recourse to the borrower.

While it was stated that the GSI is supposed to be used as a last resort to recover past due debts inclusive of the principal sum and interest but excluding any penal charge imposed by the PFI, it is my opinion that PFIs should still have been mandated to apply ex-parte to the Courts before the accounts are debited with the amounts owed by borrowers in order to avoid situations where the process is abused by PFIs.

The fact that joint accounts are also included in the list of GSI eligible accounts may also pose some problems and is likely to be challenged by persons (spouses, partners, siblings etc) who may, for one reason or another, be operating joint accounts with borrowers.

Having been a bit worried by the CBN’s 65% LDR policy as it concerns the safety of depositors’ funds, it is unlikely one will not support any policy that will improve loan recovery and protect depositors’ funds from high toxic or non-performing loans. My support for the GSI process in principle notwithstanding, I do not believe anything could be lost if a borrower’s account is frozen and then debited upon application and grant thereof by a court of Law. Much the same way the Courts have held that anti-corruption agencies like the EFCC and ICPC have no right to request banks to freeze a customer’s account without first obtaining a court order, so should the case be with the GSI process. The shift in a democratic dispensation towards making Laws and Regulations that give too much power to individuals or entities without first getting a go-ahead from the Court is a bit uncomfortable.

COVID-19 AND LESSONS TO BE LEARNED...(3)

WORK FROM HOME & VIRTUAL MEETINGS: I guess we are all familiar with the denouncement of office meetings by a sizable number of employees as a time waster and a hindrance to productivity at work. The social media is awash with memes on this. Beyond office meetings however, there are periodic meetings, seminars and conferences held by international organizations where participants have to fly in from different countries to attend. With this pandemic and the cancellation of flights plus the need for social (I prefer physical) distancing, we have seen the likes of International Monetary Fund (IMF), the UN Security Council, United Nations Human Rights Council and the G20 Health Ministers among others, holding virtual/online meetings which are no less productive than the ones which were in the past, held physically. Companies have also been holding shareholders’ meetings and AGMs online.  

Before the pandemic and the lockdown imposed to curb its spread shut most people in the world inside, employees in many organizations had been advocating to be allowed to work from home, and to be fair, some organizations had started trying it out on a limited basis to see whether productivity would remain the same or even see some improvements. According to Harvard Business Report, roughly about 5% of the workers in the US and Europe were working from home before the lockdown. With Covid-19 and the lockdown imposed in many countries in the world however, many companies have had no choice but to allow many of their staff to work from home and the number of workers who will be allowed to work from home will likely increase significantly post-Covid-19, whenever that is, since it appears Covid-19 will stick around for some time to come.

In cities where commuters spend hours in traffic to and from work each day, more companies might need to take more critical looks at the probable benefits of having their staff work more frequently from home.

The downsides of working from home in a country like Nigeria will of course revolve more around the mirage that stable supply of electricity really is in most areas, and good internet access that will be required for the work to be comfortably done. However, a balance can be found between health and loss of productive man hours that are daily experienced in traffic versus the facilities that will be required for work to be effectively done from home. Many are already saying work from home (WFH) is the future of work. Twitter in fact, recently announced that its employees can work from home on a permanent basis and not just till the end is seen of Covid-19. But while WFH waits to fully take off in the nearest future, there is no doubt that with the persistence of the pandemic, especially with some countries experiencing a second wave of infections upon the ease of lockdown, more employers will have to content themselves with the work being done (and hopefully not harass employees with messages in a bid to monitor the work being done) as opposed to insistence on the workers’ daily physical presence at work.

 

NIGERIAN  GOVERNMENT & ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE: in the 5 days of partial lockdown in Lagos State before the Federal government imposed lockdown on Lagos, FCT and Ogun State, the Lagos State government had requested that members of the public refrain from going to the State Secretariat and any transaction needed to be done be carried out via telephone. The fact however is, precious few transactions with government offices can be carried out online. And over the phone, only the most basic of enquiries can mostly be made. I dare say, this is mostly true in other States of the federation as well as at the FCT.

Ensuring contact with members of the public has over the years and decades of Nigeria’s existence, mostly served the corrupt tendencies of government workers. If governments at all levels in the country should learn anything from this pandemic, definitely, one of the key lessons, and there are many, is the long overdue need, in the best interest of the government especially as regards revenue generation, to take as much of the governance as possible online. Phasing out physical interactions with government offices will not only substantially reduce corruption endemic in the civil service, the government will find its revenue generation greatly improved and expanded. This has become even more important with the pandemic drastically shrinking government’s income also from citizens’ inability to carry out normal business with the government. In the decision to put infrastructure in place for electronic governance, the government across all levels, have to put the economy and efficient service delivery at the forefront. Perhaps government would not be losing quite as much revenue as they presently are, if the government’s ease of doing business campaign had not been restricted almost, to only the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). While the measures quickly put in place by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration (NAFDAC) during the pandemic, for entrepreneurs to apply online for registration of products with it is commendable, much more still need to be done by other government agencies and departments both at State and local government levels across all sectors of the economy as much as practicable to enable citizens transact business with them online. Perhaps government would not be losing so much revenue if some form of electronic governance had been in place. As things stand, governments will continue to lose revenue on a massive scale until the economy fully reopens.

COVID-19 & LESSONS TO BE LEARNED...(2)

VIROLOGISTS & EPIDEMIOLOGISTS: while many of us may have before the Covid-19 Pandemic heard or known of the existence of virologists and epidemiologists, it is more likely, few of us paid any serious attention to who they are and what they do. With the global devastation that Covid-19 is wrecking however, more of us are beginning to realize their importance with regards to the study of the virus and how it can be defeated. According to chron.com, Virologists are microbiologists who study microorganisms that quickly duplicate, resulting in the rapid spreading of viruses. Their primary work is to figure out how diseases like AIDS, SARS and hepatitis spread (I guess you can now safely add Covid-19 to the list), in order to prevent more rampant development and to assist in vaccine development. Virologists’ core duties involve researching, preparing, conducting and overseeing studies of microorganisms so as to better discern what contributes to their growth and spread of the virus in the bacteria and thus better predict the evolution of the virus in populations. Epidemiologists on the other hand, are involved in the study of epidemics and their spread over a defined period of time.

Because of Covid-19, we are now seeing epidemiologists and virologists more often on our TVs and paying attention to what they have to say about how to contain or stop the spread. In a country like Nigeria where certain fields are not very valued, some of us will, going forward, now learn to appreciate the importance of these fields and the difference the work they do, can make to whether we live or die.

VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS: one of the first things done in many countries was directing the closure of schools in order to both protect the children and contain the spread of the pandemic. The need to keep the children engaged and to ensure their education does not suffer as a result of school closure, necessitated a move from the 4 walls of the school classroom to virtual classrooms enabled by the use of video conferencing apps. Of course, online education and webinar classes were not uncommon for tertiary level education pre-Covid-19. What may be relatively new is the younger ones at the primary and secondary school levels receiving educational instructions online. Many are even already considering taking the virtual classroom for the younger ones beyond the Covid-19 era. It is of course, a whole different thing whether parents, who have had to work extra hard to keep their children engaged during this lockdown will be in support of any such move.

AREA BOYS, UNEMPLOYED YOUTHS; LEGACY OF CIVIL RULE?: this is more peculiar to Lagos State though it can also be found in other parts of the country to a smaller extent. The Covid-19 induced lockdown brought along its security challenges. While increase in domestic violence, cybercrimes and petty thefts had largely been anticipated, it is doubtful that a resurgence in armed robbery operations were expected. However, that was the situation some days before the end of the initial 2 weeks Federal Government lockdown in both Ogun and Lagos States. While officials of the Police Force tried to play down the resurgence of house to house robbery attacks even after parading some 200 or so suspects they arrested, the fact that most neighbourhoods drafted their men into some sort of emergency vigilante to ward off the criminals added to the hardships foisted by the lockdown.

There is no doubt that hunger became even more of a problem with many who could barely afford to feed well even at the best of times. However, it is my belief that a good majority of the boys/young men who terrorized hapless people during the period were guys who never had any real employment before the lockdown and a number of them most likely form part of the army of young men armed by our politicians during election periods and who afterwards use the weapons, including guns, that they were given by politicians, to commit crimes against ordinary folks.

If the army of young unemployed men who spend most of their days doing nothing but who have the desire to wear designer clothes and use expensive gadgets, did not give people of the South-West and particularly those in Lagos, much cause for concern before, what happened during the lockdown should make us sit down, or perhaps stand up and take action on how this ticking time bomb should best be safely defused.  

COVID-19 PANDEMIC & THE MANY LESSONS TO BE LEARNED...(1)

Many people have said, and I agree for the most part, that the world will, as a matter of necessity make adjustments to the way many things are done post-Covid-19. While people desperately long to get their lives back post-Covid-19, those lives would have been greatly impacted in some ways by this pandemic. There is no doubt that for many, both individuals and corporate bodies, the return will be to a new normal. The fact that as at today, the 10th of June 2020, more than 7.26 million infections have been recorded and over 411,879 people have died across 188 countries and regions (according to data monitored by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering [CCSE] at Johns Hopkins University), and the near global restrictions of movement of people means that Covid-19 has wrought a lot of negatives. However, much as the pandemic has wreaked a lot of havocs globally, there are some positive changes that are already being made and will still need to be made in many countries of the world. The purpose of this article is to look at possible lessons to be learned and positive resultant changes that should be made both across the world and in Nigeria in the wake of this pandemic and its effects. Because there are several aspects to consider, this article will run in a few series.

CHINA AS THE WORLD FACTORY 

Long before Covid-19 started wrecking havoc in other countries of the world, its economic impact was already being felt in many countries chiefly because virtually everything that one can think of, are being either manufactured or assembled in China. The Western countries in pursuit of the maximum profit they can possibly make, decided the best thing was to tap into the huge population that China has, to get cheap labour and in so doing, outsourced virtually everything to China. This is the reason why when China started sneezing and coughing literally, the whole world started shivering with the cold of a slow in production of goods. It is time this trend is examined and tweaked to focus a bit less on just profit making and more on each country going back to either resuscitating or expanding its manufacturing capacity locally. The way many companies in the wake of scarcity of medical equipments particularly PPEs, redirected their focus towards local manufacture of this medical supplies, is a positive.

Beyond the capitalists’ actions which caused the world to rely almost entirely on China for most goods, the pandemic’s travel to other countries from China caused many countries to place restrictions on pharmaceutical goods and food supplies. The reason for the restrictions is not farfetched; each country wanted to be sure it would have enough supplies to meet its own needs. A country like Nigeria thus has to seriously work on producing many of tis needs for its large population. We have to go from a consuming country to a manufacturing country. On this, the CBN’s determination to push the country into local production of most the goods consumed in the country is a step in the right direction. 

Also, fact that Nigeria, while not having China’s population, is the most populous Black Country in the world with an estimated population of about 200 million people at least 65% of whom have been said to be below 35 years old should even be more of an incentive for us because what that means is that we have a very active population, and engaging that population productively will not only grow our economy, it will massively reduce our very high unemployment rate, reduce, poverty level and our over-independence on imported goods while also reducing crimes due to more people having opportunities to earn honest living.

                            Unemployment rate as at Q3 of 2018. Source: NBS

SOCIAL INTERACTIONS

It was common pre-Covid-19 for people to assume that physical interactions reduced drastically with the advent of smartphones because many people appeared to prefer chatting than talking even when in physical proximity to each other. The meme of a child wondering whether he was downloaded by his parents who were always bent over their phones, I believe, is a very popular one and aptly describes how smart phones have changed human interactions. 

                                             Source of images: Pinterest

However, nothing contradicts our seeming preference for interaction behind the comfort of our phones more sharply than the speed with which this virus traveled, carried and transferred by humans, from the city of Wuhan in the Hubei Province of China to most of the countries of the world. The lockdown has more so, shown very clearly that man truly is a social animal and even when virtual contacts seemed to be taking over, and sometimes, even when we will rather chat when we are in the same place instead of talk face to face, physical interactions have proved very important. I suspect that if only for a while, as the lockdown is being eased and after it eventually ends everywhere, we shall learn to treasure more, the friendship and interactions of the people in our lives. And perhaps, in countries in which so many died because of the selfishness and irresponsibility of a few, people would have learned to be a little less selfish and will be more open to acting in favour of the greater good.

THE ABULE ADO EXPLOSION, DREAMS LOST AND HUMANITY REGAINED

The first I heard about the explosion which happened on Sunday the 15^th of March in the Abule Ado area of Lagos State was via a text message from a friend which had advised that the area should be avoided because of a pipeline explosion. My first thought was, oh no! Not another explosion, when will the vandals learn? To be honest, I didn’t give too much thought to it again, I only hoped there wasn’t any fatality of misguided people who risk their lives and die in the process of scooping fuel. It wasn’t until very much later in the evening that I got to see on the news, the magnitude of the explosion and I got to hear that this time, the cause of the explosion might not have been pipeline vandalism that has come to form part of our sad story in this country.

Picture of Emmanuel & Chisom Udoakanobi, newly married couple courtesy of Vanguard Newspaper.

Since Sunday when the explosion happened, different media outlets have come out with different figures/numbers of casualties and fatalities. As at this morning, the Guardian newspaper, reported that 23 fatalities have been recorded as a result of the explosion. Many more people got injured and are being treated at a naval hospital not too far from the area of the explosion.

Something I noticed though in the midst of the gloom and darkness of the aftermath of the explosion, first in the much, (perhaps rightly?) vilified, social media, and now in the traditional electronic media, is the fact names and faces are being given to some of the victims of the explosion. The names we have heard and the faces we have seen certainly are very few compared with the numbers of people we have been told died from the explosion, but I definitely feel the fact we have heard names and seen faces, and in fact have a story or two about a few of the people killed in the explosion, is a starting point.

You might wonder why hearing the names of the people killed in the explosion and hearing their stories is so important. If you have followed events since Boko Haram started killing people en masse in Nigeria, all we are ever given are the numbers of people killed. We were never told the names of the dead, whether they had dreams and aspirations, and if any of them did, what those dreams and aspirations were, before their lives were brutally cut short by unfeeling terrorists. The story is the same with deaths recorded from accidents, from building collapses across the country, from deaths stemming from farmers/herders clashes etc. We never got to hear how the lives of the loved ones they left behind changed after these deaths. All we have always been told are numbers. No more. Just numbers that took the humanity from the dead and rendered them as no more than mere statistics, corpses.

To be sure, as someone who is developing a huge interest in numbers and statistics, numbers are very important. Studying numbers and analyzing them can go a long way in detecting problems and in knowing the kind of solution that can be employed. However, where people are killed either by deliberate or negligent actions or omissions to do certain important things, it is of the utmost importance that people killed by such actions or omissions to act are given flesh by the telling of their stories. By making their names public and through the telling of their stories including their dreams, aspirations and hopes for the future, we are made to realize that they may not have been too different from those of us still living. It is only through the telling of the experiences of the dead while they lived, that we really get to feel their loss much the same or at least similar to the sense of loss we would feel, had they been personally known to us. It is also through hearing their stories that we can make the decisions individually and collectively, to be better, to do better and to demand better from those charged with tasks which affect our lives.

It is in the light of the above that the celebration of the life of Rev, Sis. Dr. Henrietta Alokha, the Principal/Administrator of Bethlehem Girls College, who died in the process of ensuring the girls entrusted in her care by their parents, lived, need to be commended and amplified. It is also for this reason that we need to hear more about the newly married couple, Emmanuel and Chisom Udoakanobi (the latter, reportedly, a first class graduate of accounting), who were reportedly expecting their first child when they met with their untimely deaths. It is because the people affected by the explosion are way more than just numbers, that many of us rejoice upon hearing of the rescue of the 3 year old Favour from beneath the rubble of buildings affected by the explosion.

It is so we can properly mourn the loss of all those killed and sympathise and pray for those who survived but probably lost properties and livelihoods and for us to resolve and take action towards stopping recurrence of this kind of tragedy that we need to hear the names, see the faces and listen to the stories of all those killed in the explosion. We need to see the faces of the dead, so we can all appreciate that our individual actions and or inactions have consequences for ourselves as well as for others. At the end of the day, numbers are important, but our humanity given flesh by the stories of the humans who perish because of our actions or inactions, is way more important.