Coro-Palliatives: The substance and the politics. - Ik Muo, PhD.

A palliative is a medical treatment that relives suffering without treating its cause or an action  designed to  minimize the effect of a problem without solving the problem. Concerning the WAC( War Against Coro),  palliatives are the interventions  by governments , organisations, associations and even individuals to ameliorate the  impact of the triple locks(lockup, lockdown and lock-in) on the economies of individuals and businesses. In Nigeria, the issue in contention is whether the government is extending palliatives to the people or whether the people are the ones ‘palliativising’ the government. Now, earlier on, Britain picked up 80% of private sector wages and just recently, it subsidized lunch to the tune of 50% for Britons; food for the people and business for the restaurants.   Ghana gave the poor free electricity till 2021. In Nigeria however, while Ogun and Lagos state governments reduced land-charges by 50%, the FG on 1/9/20, increased the price of fuel from N148 to N160  and doubled the price of electricity while interest on savings was reduced to 1.25% when inflation is around 13% .

Long before now, the same government had increased the Kaduna-Abuja rail fare by 100%,  Airport Service Charge by 100% and access fee by 300% So, who is ‘palliativising’ who? This is reverse palliative.  Meanwhile, the government said that the hikes in the prices of petrol and electricity were by discos and oil companies  but that the ‘wicked’ increment would transform the economy while  the ruling APC says  it was in the interest of the people(!!??). Some mischievous and unkind Nigerians ( I am not among them) reminded them, with some ‘action’ pictures, how they ‘occupied Nigeria’ in January 2012 over a small version of the same matter! This is just an appetizer.

The other day, the FG approved the $3.1bn customs modernization project on a PPP basis. My mouth is too holy to mention the Naira equivalent of this amount. I am not a quantity surveyor but the shiver that went through my body  when I heard that figure was similar to what happened to me  when I heard about N1.7bn for Abuja runway consultancy ( just consultancy) and N64bn for University of Maiduguri fencing project. The other interesting news is that our Resident Doctors are  on strike over Covid allowance and other small matters( their ultimatum expired 3 weeks ago); just as ASUU is also on strike and JOHESU( health workers) is warming up. Some people will argue that Customs earns the money and any money expended on them  is an investment. Fine! So, the amount spent on health  and education is not an investment? That is by the way.

 Last week, some people asked me why I addressed Coro as an Oga and a celebrity. There are two reasons; first, it has taken the front-page and primetime spots in global print and electronic media. Second, it hangs out with celebrities and that enhances its celebrity status.

Pogba, Neymar & Belusconi; Coronised last week

In the last week, Neymar, Paul Pogba, Tanguby Ndombele( Tottenham) Silvio Berlusconi(  former Italian President), Robert Pattinson(producer of ‘Batman’), Deayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, and his entire family, Riyad Mahrez and Aymeric Laporte(Manchester City) and Kylian Mbappe  have all  been ‘coronised’. Thus, even if we wanted to ignore coro, we cannot do so because of the association effect!

 I thank the NDDC for responding to my ‘query’ last week as to the suspiciously low figures from Kano. It is due to non-collection and non-testing of samples.  Whereas it was a general feature across the country, that of Kano was worrisome. Kano, which generally accounts for about 10% of the tests in Nigeria, tested 11834 samples in the 14 days between 8-21 July but tested only 1364 between  July 19 and September 1. So what it tested in the 6 weeks from 19/7/20 was 11% of what it tested in the preceding 2 weeks.

 Back to the scramble for vaccines. Last week, it was reported with fanfare that Nigerian had received the Russian Vaccine, which the Minister of health assured us would be referred to NAFDAC et al for assessment. The  following day, in our very before, the Minister of State for health, said that  Nigeria never received the vaccines; that the Putin-fellows merely  came to the ministry to update them on developments in the vaccine!

…Receiving  Russian Vaccines

Is the ‘Chinese Doctor’ scenario repeating itself ? And you want us to trust the government?  Meanwhile a report on the Russian vaccine has shown that at least, it is safe  though it accused Russia of ‘vaccine nationalism’. While our VP is calling for equity and accessibility in vaccine matters, Australia, (25m  citizens) has signed agreements for 85m doses(@$1.2bn and from universities), which puts it at the ‘top of the queue’ while US starts mass distribution on November1. Mr Bogillot,  of  Sanofi has estimated that ultimately, a vaccine would cost about €10.  Cheap, isn’t it? At the bank rate, that is about N5000  apiece and if countries are procuring in multiples of their population, we need about 500m doses.  You see what I mean? International flights have started and I note that elite irresponsibility is not a Nigeria-only disease. Surf the net and see a demeaning ‘love letter’, which a passenger served a hostess who asked him to mask his face.

The ‘love letter’ 

The uncertainty about school reopening continues unabated. Iran begins a new school year despite the coro concerns while France shut down 22 schools days after reopening. Wales provides face masks for students at  £2.3m while  pupils are being asked to stay off school due to positive results. In other climes,  parents fake sickness for their children so that they would not attend school. Ogun state has just adopted a staggered school opening model while private universities are pushing to be allowed to resume. We have to move on with our lives but we need to put 2 and 2 together!

The novelty of ‘coro’ continues to stun the world  with new discoveries and surprises. On the surprise side, Kate Wise, in Texas, is battling for survival  as  a bottle of hand sanitizer exploded 

while she was lighting a candle while 50 year old Solomon Ede,  was suffocated  to death by a tightfitting nose-mask which he wore to bed.  On the discovery side, it is a sign of relief to hear that  ‘coronised’ people are less likely to transmit the disease after one week in coro-captivity; and according to  BBC, that there  is a positive relationship between our poverty and low ‘coro’ fatality.

BBC Breakthrough finding

Curiouser,  is the report that traces  of coro were found  on frozen chicken imported to China from Brazil. That shows that coro is also a stubborn fellow, surviving in the frozen state for the 12893 nautical miles distance between the two countries that last about 43 days. And then,  a discovery from an unusual quarters: Pope Francis has just discovered  “a plague worse than Covid”  and that is…gossiping!

Finally on the global coro medal table, India has now won the silver medal, with 4.2m cases and 50% of these are from just 5 states and in Nigeria, it is bye to facemasks. Just a week after Anthony Sani, a former ACF scribe asked PMB to lead by example by masking his face, I have just gone around town, and I note sadly that 99% of the people I met on the trip from Okota to Akoka and back were mask-less. Maybe they are learnt from the oga at the very top!

Now to the issue of palliatives. We started today’s discourse with the strange practice of ‘reverse-palliatives’, in which we, the people, are  ‘palliativising’ the government. When I raised this matter earlier, I recalled that while each state was given 3 trailer loads of rice et al, Kano was giving 101( one hundred + one) trailer loads  and that  NDDC people expended N1.7bn to ‘take’ care of themselves out of which the faint-hearted Prof-CEO received 10m.( The politics of palliatives, 16/7/20). Anecdotal evidence shows that the government palliative has been all politics and little or nothing in substance.

Just the other day, the Oyo Commissioner for Information, Wasiu Olatubosun, alleged that the Federal Government intentionally neglected the state in the allocation of special funds and resources to prevent, control and manage COVID-19. The Benue State  Government also accused the FG of giving them 1800  bags of expired, inedible, hazardous  rice. You recall that a similar accusation was raised against the FG by the SW states. Eventually, Ondo state backtracked, the others, all APC states, kept quiet and then it became an Oyo-State affair. When Oyo state decided to return the rice, the Customs refused to accept it, and the Minister of Humanitarian and Cash Palliatives, declared bold-facedly that the rice was certified  fit by NAFDAC . And when the NAFDAC Madam  said openly that they did not certify the rice in question because they were not even requested to certify them, the  Palliative Cash Madam declared: “The rice was assessed by NAFDAC, who issued a clearance before the goods were released’. Can you imagine?  In this clash of the madams, who was saying the truth?  Well, it has been overtaken by events! Of course to begin from the beginning, it all started when the Customs, for whatever reason, represented the rice it seized from a serving Minister in 2016 as being seized in 2019! What is the truth of this date of seizure matter? It has been overtaken by events!

 Long time ago, Some thugs in Cross River state, led by a known Councilor, attacked the  Commissioner for Humanity and Social Welfare  in the state during an argument over sharing of palliatives. And then, in a survey on the coro palliatives, residents across Nigeria described the programme  as ‘scam, fraudulent and poorly executed and  ridiculous’, lamenting that ‘In some cases, food items that could not feed a family of six for a day were given to hundreds of residents to share. This was exactly what happened in Lagos state,  which started with a target of 200000 households and where the Governor, humbly admitted that their disclosed that the palliative programme designed to assist indigent and aged has been sabotaged; a statement that was not surprising because I had learnt from a friend that it was cornered by politicians. You will recall that some rascals converted a loaf of bread given to a street into a football!

 Furthermore, it was in this palliative era that I learnt that a bag of rice has diverse specifications.

Obiano Rice

 When communities  were asked to collect bags of rice by Anambra State Government  people quickly calculated their likely share. Eventually,  it happened that the bag of rice  was 10kg! However  I reserved my comment when Ifeanyi Uba’s own came out at 5kg and most often, cost of customizing the containers  was  more than the contents themselves.  And the quantity  distributed is laughable. In Abuja, it sounded better  to announce that 1000 5kg bags of rice were given to private schools rather than call it 100 bags, which was what they were. All political office seekers jumped into the palliative fray, with Dr Maduka introducing the Keke-Palli, providing fuel for keke and okada riders. In Kwara State, PDP accused APC of politicizing the palliatives while APC retorted that “It is PDP that is playing politics with this COVID-19 pandemic. “COVID-19 knows no political party or history. Furthermore, while palliatives are dropped  at peoples’ doors, or placed at convenient places for those in need to Scramble for palliatives…. Packs  lined up for those interested

Access in other climes, we ask our people to mass-up at public squares( physical distancing?) where they fight, get trampled upon so that the lucky few will collect the tokonistic pakcs. 

A study by the Future Project revealed that despite all the noise, only 3% of coro palliatives was shared by governments  while Association/ Registered organizations were responsible for  – 45%; Non-registered organization- 26%; Faith-based organization – 10%; Individuals – 16%. And beyond the negligible involvement by governments, which made most noise, the non-government  palliatives were genuine, meaningful and eye-marked by the people. There was also the issue of  North-South divide in the quantity and quality of palliatives.

 The incontrovertible verdict, which is obvious, is that the politics of the palliatives overwhelmed the substance  of it and   that all the governments, political parties and politicians were  and are guilty.

- Ik Muo, PhD. Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye. 08033026625